


Start By Being More Interesting

by sure sure (getoffmysheets)



Series: anywhere but here [2]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: ...minus the metal arm, Assassination, Bucky Barnes Is So Done, Dishonored fusion, Gen, Kid Wanda Maximoff, Kidnapping, Low Chaos (Dishonored), Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes | Shrinkyclinks, Parent Bucky Barnes, Parent-Child Relationship, Past Bucky Barnes/Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers is always That Bitch, The Outsider's Aggressive Flirting Tactics, morally ambiguous - Freeform, whatever Bucky's stacked
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-02-25 23:58:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18712342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getoffmysheets/pseuds/sure%20sure
Summary: In which Bucky Barnes just wants to rescue his Empress, ignore the dark god stalking him, stop falling off of streetlamps, and never have to crawl through the plague infested streets of Dunwall again.(...guys, whose gonna tell him?)





	1. House of Pleasure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I can’t be that interesting, I only have two goals – rescue Wanda and don’t fall off of anything else.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's my birthday, so have a thing! But it's MY birthday, so ofc it's a weird thing. This story is also called "That Time Steve Was Extra Bitchy, Or: Bucky Barnes is Just So Done With This Shit"
> 
> Please pay attention to the tags, especially if you are reading this and unfamiliar with the plot of any game in the Dishonored franchise. This universe is far more comfortable with moral ambiguity than the MCU, and some of that will transfer into this story.
> 
> I do intend to cover both games, plus both story lines in the DLC, so...head's up, this is probably going to be stupidly long. Please tell me if I should increase the rating - there isn't going to be as much sexual content as is typical for me, but there will be plenty of violence, blood, and gore.

Bucky would never understand the appeal of these places – he didn’t _before_ Natasha was killed, but after seeing the backrooms and watching the misery and squalor Prudence kept the prostitutes in, Bucky was certain he’d never step foot in one again. By the Outsider, all he wanted was to get his little Empress back and get out of this wretched place.

 

Speaking of which…

 

“Don’t you have other people to torture?” Bucky demanded, with an irritable glance at the narrow figure standing next to him while he crouched on the roof. “Other people you can bother? People who are less busy than me?”

 

“But that’s exactly why I follow you,” the Outsider drawled. “I’m bored and you’re the most interesting person alive.”

 

Huh. From a lord or lady visiting him at the Empress’s court, that would almost sound like a line, but the Outsider delivered it baldly – the statement of a basic fact rather than anything to do with pedestrian flattery.

 

Everything about the…man? God? Everything about the Outsider was unnatural. His eyes were slick dark pools like an otter’s, black and shiny – almost as though they were filled with oil and not eyes at all. His pale hair, straw-blond, should shine in the early afternoon sun, but it never did. Last night, his dark suit should’ve left him blanketed in shadows, his slight form swallowed by the darkness of the stormy night. But he seemed to stand in a static gray light at all times, almost as though this world never touched him, no matter where he was. His voice was too deep, too rich and resinous for his slender physical body, but it was emotionless and level in a way no human spoke, with a vibration of something beneath each of his syllables that made Bucky’s hindbrain whine unhappily at the uncanny dissonance.

 

“I’m really not,” Bucky said flatly. The mark at the back of his left hand glowed as he aimed his spell at a white ledge high up on the building. He’d gotten used to the accompanying rush of air in his ears – mostly. And he was no longer at all surprised to find the Outsider still standing next to him. Like a bad fucking penny. “I can’t be that interesting, I only have two goals – rescue Wanda and don’t fall off of anything else.”

 

“Hm, yes.” His smile was closed-lipped, concealing the rows of razorblade teeth Bucky knows are sitting in his mouth. He was oddly reluctant to show them in his presence, though Bucky was starting to suspect that was for maximum effect when the Outsider decides he _really_ wanted to reveal them. “Yes, most people find that spell…tricky to get a handle on.”

 

“I thought you said my powers were unique?” Bucky wasn't that interested in the answer, at this point he expected half of the things that come from the Outsider’s mouth were a lie. After visiting the office of the Overseer, it would be foolish to believe that he really was the root of all evil, but he was still an ancient and powerful being with no reason to tell Bucky the truth. It was just that that the flow of conversation felt more natural than being watched in eerie silence.

 

“Oh, they are. But each of you will always manifest some variation of a short-range teleportation spell.”

 

“Blink,” Bucky murmured absently, subconsciously flexing the fingers of his left hand.

 

“If that’s what you’d like to call it,” the Outsider said, dismissive.

 

The interior of The Cat was dim and hazy. Why did people think that dark and musty equaled romantic? Bucky thought it just felt suffocating. The Outsider lapsed back into silence – it became a kind of alarm for Bucky. While he doubted the demon god had his best interests in mind, he never talked while Bucky was…working.

 

Killing the Pendleton twins was easy – the blade Peter made for him cut through flesh and bone like a dream, but he really couldn't think about ten year old boys making murder weapons right then. Stopping the prostitutes before they can scream without killing them was harder, but doable.

 

He ended up pacing in the Ivory Room, Morgan’s headless corpse bleeding onto the carpet. Mindlessly, he picked up the prostitute and dumped her onto the more comfortable bed. _Coretta. Her name is Coretta_ , Natasha’s voice murmured, the heart of his beloved Empress pulsing against his palm. _The bastard daughter of a baron from Gristol. Her mother was his scullery maid. The baron said he loved her. He lied._

 

“What are you doing?” the Outsider asked, bringing Bucky out of his strange trance. The carpet squished below his boots, the plush fibers soaked with blood.

 

“I can’t…I can’t go get her,” he muttered. Oddly enough, Bucky found that the smell of it was nearly unnoticeable to his nose. When you spend so much time surrounded by the stench of blood and filth, it started to become a part of your daily experience. Ordinary.

 

“The little empress? But she’s the real reason you came,” the Outsider said, cocking his head. The dark god seemed genuinely puzzled by a lot of the things Bucky did. “You told me yourself Prudence’s journal said they’re holding the girl in the staff apartments. The attic.”

 

“I’m…I’m covered in blood, Outsider, and I’m not…my mind is not the way it once was.” That was a kinder way to put it. Kinder than ‘I believe they pulled my brains out my nose at the torture chamber in Coldridge Prison, and half of it’s still lying there on the floor’. He touched the gruesome death mask over his face. “I don’t want her to see me like this.”

 

There was a very long silence then, as Bucky stared out at the sluggish Wrenhaven River from the balcony, mucky and filled with reeds and weeds this far inland, his arms and legs dangling through the bars, useless as a ragdoll. Far below on the streets, the guardsmen talked to each other and changed posts. The afternoon sun was bright and cheerful, but Bucky didn’t feel it. Part of him wondered if the Outsider got bored and wandered off.

 

Finally, when he did speak, it was still with that distance echo in his tone. “They keep telling her that you’re dead, but she doesn’t believe them. She didn’t see you die, not like her mother, and so the lie is difficult for her to accept and she clings to the belief that you’ll come to get her. She tries smuggling notes out of the building. Sometimes, she even succeeds. There are two bottles floating through the river, with written notes asking for you to come back for her.”

 

The statement was dispassionate, emotionless, the way the Outsider said everything. But it was exactly what Bucky needed to hoist himself up and begin Blinking himself up to the nearest ledge.

 

He and a city guard startled each other on top of the roof but a sleep dart to his side took care of that quickly. He didn’t need to look behind him to know that the Outsider was still there.

 

“…thank you,” Bucky said quietly. He wouldn’t pretend to understand his actions or motivations, because Bucky had just enough sense left to know that would only lead to a swift descent into madness, but the Outsider could’ve easily left him there, breaking to pieces on the balcony in a helpless daze until someone walked in on that gruesome display he’d left of Morgan.

 

As expected, he received no reply for his expression of gratitude.

 

Bucky wanted to ask for more details – _is she well? Have they hurt her?_ – but that seemed…wasteful, perhaps, when he didn’t know how long he would have the cursed god’s ear and he would be able to see for himself in a few moment.

 

The windows of the attic were open, which felt careless to him, but then again, there was no reason for anyone inside to expect that one could teleport onto the rooftops around the neighborhood.

 

His fearless little empress quickly stood when Bucky walked into the room, Wanda’s back straight and her tiny voice commanding, clenching her small fists. Her cream colored dress, new and pretty the day her mother was murdered, was now a dull gray thing, frayed at the hem and half an inch too short. There was still a dark stain of Natasha’s blood on the sleeve and near the collar. Pierce been holding the future empress for six months and hadn’t bothered to find her any new clothes, never mind clothing befitting her title.

 

“Who are you? And why are you wearing that mask?” He ripped the hateful thing from his face, taking in the sight of his young charge for the first time in months, and she screamed “BUCKY!”

 

All the doubts that had haunted him left him in an instant. Even spattered with blood, haggard and gray from months spent in pain and starvation, Wanda didn’t hesitate for a moment, running straight into his arms and clinging to him desperately, sobbing into his neck. “They told me you were dead!” she cried, breaking his heart all over again with her tears. “Like-like mother! I didn’t-I didn’t believe them…”

 

“I’m here, I’m here now,” he whispered, hefting her up as he stood. She was and always would be his burden to willingly bear, and the day he could no longer carry her anymore would either be the day she sat on the throne by herself or the day they put him into the ground. “Shhh, everything’s alright. Bucky’s here.”

 

“We-we can finally leave!” she hiccupped, hands twisting into his leather coat. “I tried, Bucky, I tried to leave! I had a plan, and I almost got away twice.”

 

He kissed her cheeks, pulling off his bloody gloves to wipe her face with clean hands. “That’s my clever girl. What was your plan?”

 

She explained about the special door, the back entrance leading to the Distillery District proper on the basement level. “My lady, that was a fantastic plan,” Bucky whispered, listening for anyone in the back stairwell. From the corner of his eye, the black shape of the Outsider still lingered. “Here’s what we shall do: you are going to go down this staircase, quiet as a mouse. You aren’t going to be able to see me, but I’ll be watching you the whole time. If someone sees you, give up with being quiet and run to the back entrance as fast as you can. Don’t worry that they’ll catch you, I won’t let them. Just keep running. Got it?”

 

Wanda nodded, lower lip trembling. Putting her down made his heart physically hurt, but it would be less conspicuous to let her walk around by herself, and if they got caught, Bucky didn’t want to risk some idiot guardsman trying to shoot him and hitting her instead by accident. She looked a bit curious about the mask as he put it back over his face, but didn’t ask him anything questions about it, yet.

 

As they descend the staircase, Wanda expertly creeping down and avoid the creaking steps, Bucky wait until she was out of hearing range and murmured “Can she see you, too?”

 

Without bothering to lower his voice, the Outsider said “No.” Then, after a moment of hesitation, added “To see me with her conscious self, to catch any glimpse of the Void at her age would likely have…undesirable side effects.”

 

An understatement, to say the least. Bucky made a mental note to never ask _how_ , precisely, he knew that.

 

Either Bucky’s caution was misplaced, or they were very lucky – no one stopped them from leaving, though there was a heart-pounding moment as he descended the last stair where he realized that the door to the ladies bathing area was open and two women were inside. Another judicious use of Blink let him slip past the doorway without them noticing, and Wanda was small enough to slide along the wall and straight out the back door.

 

“We did it! We did it!” she cheered, throwing a last glare at the looming shadow of the Golden Cat. Pointing to the door at the end of the alley, she said “Let’s go!”

 

Her tug on the handle rattled the door in its frame, but the wood didn’t budge. “Oh. Oh, no,” she whispered. Staring up at Bucky, Wanda found herself unsettled by the way the mask seemed to grin at her with its mouth of leather and wire, the way she couldn’t see Bucky’s real eyes beyond its lenses, but she swallowed bravely and said, “Prudence…that old hag Prudence must’ve locked it after the last time I tried to get away. I don’t know where she keeps the key.”

 

Patting her hair soothingly, she was relieved to hear his voice was nearly the same. Bucky said “I’ve stolen a key from her office. Let’s try it and see if that works.”

 

It did, and Wanda nearly vibrated with her excitement as the tumblers lifted when suddenly, the Outsider murmured next to Bucky’s ear “You’ll want to avoid the Weepers, Bucky. You can fight them off with force, but she can’t.”

 

Blood freezing through his veins, Bucky caught Wanda by the shoulder before she could run ahead. “I have a very, very important job for you to do,” he said somberly, crouching so that she could stare into the dead eyes of the lenses. She was small and pale and frightened, but he wasn’t worried now that he had her. If she was by his side, he could fix any ill. “We’re going to have one of those adventures you’ve always wanted.”

 

“We are?” Wanda asked brightly, with such complete trust that it was more painful than any stab wound. The master torturer in Coldridge couldn’t touch that kind of agony.

 

Cupping her face, he rubbed a thumb along her cheek. She would be as beautiful as Natasha in ten years. Hopefully as fierce, too. “We are. I need you to climb onto my back and hold on really, really tightly, my lady.” Without looking at the Outsider, he quietly said “Tell me if they hear us.”

 

He expected his plea to fall upon deaf ears, but the Outsider simply said “Yes.”

 

“Who, Bucky? Who heard us?”

 

“Never mind about that yet, my lady. Climb on.”

 

Bucky spent several minutes with Wanda, tense and overly alert as he shifted around with her on his back, making sure that he could still reach everything he needed and swing his sword without trouble, adjusting her arms so that she was holding onto the straps at the front of his jacket rather than grabbing him around the neck. He could tell she was curious about what they were doing, but didn’t explain himself until he was satisfied she wouldn’t easily fall. “We’re going to have to…fly, a little bit. Kind of.”

 

“Fly?” she asked eagerly. “Are we going to climb on the buildings the way you showed me at the palace?”

 

“Even better,” he said, tapping Wanda’s toes in her faded silk slippers. “We’re going to use _magic_.”

 

“How?”

 

He lifted his left hand with the strange black starburst-like mark over his tendons. “Remember what we talked about with Mommy?” he whispered, squeezing her little fingers with his other hand. “Sometimes there are secrets that we can only talk about with each other?”

 

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “This is like that? A secret just for us?”

 

“Just for us,” he vowed, glancing at the Outsider, watching them with his typical neutral expression. “We’re going to practice flying a couple of times. I’m going to count to three and when I start counting, I need you to breathe out, okay? Your lungs need to be empty when I say ‘go’, Wanda.”

 

It was a lesson he’d had to learn the hard way, nearly vomiting up his breakfast several times in the yard of the Hound Pits before the Outsider hinted that he’d feel less like he was dying if he wasn’t trying to breathe in just as he executed the spell.

 

Finally, he said “Are you ready, my lady?”

 

“Yes, Bucky.”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“One hundred percent!”

 

“Are you a thousand percent sure?”

 

“Yes!”

 

“Okay.” He aimed the Blink across the alley. “One…” Her breath fanned out across the nape of his neck, ruffling his hair. “Two…” Her fingers tightened in his jacket, hanging on the way he instructed. “Three…go!”

 

Wanda’s whole body jerked violently against his back, but she hung on the way he taught her, and a loud gasp bursted out of her lungs when Bucky’s feet hit the cobblestones on the other side of the alley. “Bu-Bucky…”

 

“Are you okay?” he said urgently. “Wanda?”

 

“Let’s do it again!” she gasped, bouncing eagerly as she caught her breath.

 

“Alright, just wait a moment.” The other hard lesson he’d had to learn was about Blinking too many times in a short period. Two fast Blinks were manageable – he’d even worked himself up to three if he really had to. But four would have him stumbling around like a drunk at tavern closing time, both ears ringing, his nose dripping blood, his vision so blurry he’d nearly walked off a ledge. The blue potion Peter cooked up was the only thing that made his world stop spinning, and it wasn’t an experience he was eager to recreate.

 

After two more tries in the alley, Bucky felt she was ready for them to keep moving. “You’re going to be scared, and that’s okay. But no matter what happens, you can’t let go, my lady.”

 

Very quietly, she said “I won’t, Bucky. I promise.”

 

In retrospect, he should’ve reminded her to be quiet.

 

“What are those people doing, crawling in the street?”

 

Several Weepers quickly looked up to stare at them and Wanda gave a terrified little yelp at their gray, wasted faces. “One-two-three-GO!”

 

This time, she muffled a scream of fear into his shoulder as she realized they were now three stories above the street, her shaking hands gripping his jacket with white knuckles. “B-Bu-Bu…”

 

Balanced in the middle of the pipe, Bucky said “Hold still, just try to hold still. We’re safe up here. They can’t see us, and even if they could, there’s no way they’d manage to hurt us from down there.”

 

The Outsider’s presence beside him almost a given now, nearly unnoticeable.

 

“What-what was wrong with those people?” Wanda asked, looking down over his shoulder at the Weepers belong them, now gazing around in confusion.

 

“Those were Weepers, my lady. They’ve become very ill with the plague.”

 

“Mommy tried to help them,” she recalled, laying her cheek on his back. “She didn’t want them killed, because they’re sick and not criminals.”

 

“That’s right, my lady,” he agreed softly, chest tight. “They’ve done nothing wrong, they’re just not in their right minds. Her Majesty the Empress was a wise woman. And one day, you’ll be like her.”

 

Next to him, the Outsider cocked his head, an unreadable expression on his features. Bucky firmly ignored him.

 

The way to the river was mostly clear after bypassing the Weepers, nothing he couldn’t handle by Blinking over the balconies and rooftops, far above the eyes of any guardsmen or Overseers.

 

Wanda became so accustomed to the action that he no longer needed to count for her, instead she exhaled as soon as he raised his empty left hand toward his target and by the time he closed his fist, her lungs were empty, filling with a giddy little giggle every time they landed.

 

He let her down when Happy was within sight, leading her down to the riverbank through the long rushes. “That’s was amazing!” she gushed, clinging to his hand. “Can we do that again, Bucky?”

 

“Probably not today, but yes, we can.” Gently squeezing her fingers with his left hand, he said “Remember, my lady. It’s our secret.”

 

Wanda looked proud to be entrusted with such an important thing. “Yes, Bucky.”

 

Happy looked thrilled to see them, eager to get the boat moving. As they pushed away from the bank, the Outsider vanished into black smoke on the shore.

 

All the way back to the Hound Pits, Wanda chattered at him, leaning into his side. Bucky held her against his side, her small heart beating against him, imprinting the reason for his existence back into his very bones.

 

Already his mind felt clearer with her there, her voice in his ear and her tiny hand in his. As they watched the half-ruined city from the safety of the river, Bucky pressed a kiss into her hair and knew that with his young Empress at his side, everything would eventually be well again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was never quite sure how Emily got back to Samuel without your help - it's heavily implied that Granny Rags escorts her as per instructions from the Outsider, but I'm not including the Slackjaw/Granny Rags elements into this story, since I'm trying to stick to things that will have major effects across the story and that storyline only goes into effect if you might specific conditions. (But if you want to imagine a dark Peggy Carter going insane with her obsessive love for Outsider!Steve, please feel free to do so...)
> 
> But if that implication is true, it does provide even more evidence to my belief that the Outsider canonically feels affection (or at least some favor) toward Emily and has since childhood. You know...in case the entirety of the Knife of Dunwall and Brigmore Witches wasn't enough evidence already.


	2. The Royal Physician, part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Let’s go kidnap the most annoying man in the Isles.”

Bucky’s little lady was not at all happy about being told that he would have to leave again that very day. “But we just got here, Bucky!” Wanda said, hanging onto his sleeve in a way that would’ve gotten her a scolding in the days when they were at the palace, as would that hint of a whine in her speech – Bucky wondered if she would be this upset if she weren’t so tired, or if her obvious exhaustion was just making her reaction worse. “I want to go with you!”

 

Something in his face must’ve given away his rapidly crumbling resolve.

 

“That would _not_ be a good idea,” the Outsider said over Wanda’s shoulder, with an uncharacteristic sharpness to his tone that made the vocal dissonance especially grating and sent cold prickles to the top of Bucky’s spine. “You cannot prevent her from witnessing your work and protect her life at the same time, Bucky. Taking her with you will get at least one of you killed.”

 

Bucky sighed heavily. As much as he hated the idea of leaving her, he didn’t need to see the future to know that the Outsider was right. Nowhere in Dunwall was safe, particularly if Bucky was there.

 

Circling around Wanda to stand beside his usual place at Bucky’s shoulder, the Outsider murmured “Tell her you will return with a gift.”

 

Stroking her badly-maintained curls, Bucky said “My lady, it will be very late when I return, but I’ll have a present for you tomorrow.”

 

Her mother would never have promised such a thing – Natasha used to say that teaching her the benefits of bribery was not an attractive quality for an Empress, a sentiment that Bucky heartily agreed with. But Natasha was no longer here to distract Wanda from noticing his often long and very necessary absences.

 

“Alright,” she muttered, subdued and unhappy, before holding her arms out beseechingly for a long farewell. At eight, Wanda already realized she would not be given a choice, not really.

 

Letting her cuddle against him, he picked her up and began walking up the crumbling steps to the yard with the Outsider just a step behind. Glancing at the workshop, his mood lightened immediately as a sudden thought struck him. “Ah, my lady, I have forgotten,” Bucky said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. “You will not miss me at all.”

 

“Of course I will, Lord Barnes!” Wanda said with an imperious pout.

 

 _Lord Barnes_.

 

Bucky forced himself to smile at her despite the knife twisting its way through his gut. That was the _last_ name he wanted coming out of her mouth. At least he knew she meant it in jest. She couldn’t possibly know how painful it was for him to hear.

 

“You will not have time to miss me,” he said, rather than address that. “You will be far too entertained by your host.”

 

“Who, Bucky? Who is it?” she asked eagerly, looking curiously around the workshop – empty but for the machinery and the benches, their voices ringing off the rusted metal of the shop.

 

Bucky frowned at the silent room. “Hm, well, I suppose I’ll have to find him first.”

 

“James?”

 

Wanda twisted curiously in his arms just a moment before he turned to gaze at the speaker. “Miss Pepper,” he greeted politely. “I suppose they sent you to watch over my charge while I’m away?”

 

“Yes,” she agreed stiffly, her lightly freckled face red with anger and her strawberry blonde hair loosened from its up-style. “But not precisely the reason for my presence just now.”

 

“Peter,” Wanda said, hushed. “Peter, what happened to you?”

 

From behind the severe cut of Pepper’s dark skirts, Peter Parker stared back at them, his right eye socket discolored with a rapidly darkening bruise. His eyes quickly moved to the floor as he mumbled “Hello, Your Majesty.”

 

“What,” Bucky said, flat and toneless with suppressed rage. Peter had never addressed Wanda by her appropriate title in the entirety of their lives, they were practically raised together.

 

“It seems,” Pepper said, keeping her voice as even and soothing as possible, one of her small gloved hands gently resting at the top of Peter’s head. “That Overseer Toomes felt Mister Parker was in need of…extra discipline.”

 

“Extra…discipline…” Bucky repeated, still emotionless and expressionless.

 

“He doesn’t know his Strictures.” Pepper swallowed as she looked into the empty space staring back at her from Bucky’s pale eyes. While James Barnes’ skill with a blade was renowned for nearly twenty years, she’d never considered him to be a hard man before Natasha’s death. But the Lord Protector had come back from prison a very different person, a much older and grimmer man, one Pepper hardly recognized, despite being the late Empress’s steward nearly their whole adulthood.

 

Wanda whispered “Bucky, are you okay?”

 

“Yes, my lady,” he replied automatically, setting the little girl on her feet. Pepper was relieved to see that the shard of the Void yawning out from his eyes started fading. “Let Peter show you around his new workshop.”

 

“Are you leaving?” she asked, hands tightening in his coat. “Bucky-”

 

“No, not yet,” he said gently. “I won’t leave without saying goodbye, I promise. Stay with Peter and Miss Pepper – I’ll be right back, my lady.”

 

Bucky’s had to leave many times during certain periods of Wanda’s childhood – sometimes as short as overnight and sometimes as long as weeks at a time – but Pepper’s never seen her behave this way before. It seemed that Bucky was not the only one changed during their time apart.

 

“James,” Pepper said hesitantly, the question dying on her lips before she can give voice to the words waiting there.

 

“Stay with them,” he said quietly, and glanced away to find himself staring into the eerie blackness of the Outsider’s eyes. Holding gaze of the dark god, he said “I’ll take care of it, Virginia.”

 

Pepper bowed her head, wondering if Overseer Toomes would die, but unwilling to plead for his life – not when Peter’s face looked the way it did. The boy had no living parents, so many of the men and women of the royal court had a hand in raising him, herself and Tony, the Royal Physician, most of all. She was the closest to a mother he’d ever known and if she’d had any skill with a weapon, she would’ve killed the man herself. Of course, then the Overseers would declare her a witch and have her dragged off to Holger’s Square, never to be seen again.

 

Almost amused, the Outsider said, “You do realize that if you kill the man Admiral Ross has chosen to be the new High Overseer, this conspiracy is over.”

 

“I don’t intend to kill anyone,” Bucky answered tightly, coat flaring behind him as the door to the taproom swung open. As usual, Ross was pouring over a set of maps and diagrams in the main bar, mug of watered-down beer in hand.

 

“James,” Ross greeted, puzzled. “I thought you and Mister Hogan had already taken off for Maximoff’s Bridge.”

 

“Just taking care of some last minute duties before I leave,” Bucky said, with all the calm he could muster. “Including the matter of young Peter.”

 

“Mister Parker? Yes, he’s quite skilled already, isn’t he? That blade he crafted was positively inspired.”

 

Bucky didn’t know why the man sounded so self-satisfied by that – Ross had nothing to do with the weapon, either the blade’s design or the work that went into crafting it. “It’s my understanding that Overseer Toomes has taken it upon himself to instruct Peter in his devotions.”

 

“Hm, yes,” Ross agreed, clearly disinterested with the topic. “He did mention that Mister Parker hasn’t been properly taught his Seven Strictures. The child was quite impertinent with him as well. An orphan, you know – he needs a firm hand. Miss Potts objected, but I agree with Overseer Toomes. The boy will be grateful for the discipline as he grows older.”

 

His Ma had a firm hand, and Bucky had been hit a time or two as a young boy, when he’d had a mouth smarter than his brain. But his Ma never walloped him in the face so hard he’d ended up with a black eye. “There seems to have been a misunderstanding,” Bucky said, with the barest attempt at a polite smile – much too cold to convey any sentiment beyond anger. “Lady Wanda is under my care, and young Peter is as well until a safer location is found for him. In future, Toomes will control his urge to _correct_ Peter or you will no longer have the assistance of myself or Virginia. Do I make myself very clear, Admiral?”

 

Ross stared at him for a moment and Bucky held the perfect stillness of a predator waiting for its prey to start limping. Their little conspiracy would benefit each of the participants in different ways, Bucky understood this perfectly. But they couldn’t afford to lose some of the most key members and this included himself and Pepper. They needed Bucky for the dirty work, and he was well aware of their financial problems – Pepper was the only one who made sure this place didn’t sink into a bottomless well of debt and the wrath of unpaid staff.

 

Even more puzzled than before, surprised even, Ross said “I confess I’m quite shocked to hear that you would abandon Lady Wanda, Lord Protector.”

 

“I would not _ever_ ,” Bucky said, voice dangerously quiet at such an implication, “Abandon my lady.”

 

Even as distracted as he was, Ross realized what he meant. Bucky could almost see the word forming in his mind, a giant question mark that contained the unspoken idea no one wanted to acknowledge. In the palace, at court, riding around the city, even here in this dingy bar, whenever she walked by his side, her hand in his and Bucky’s step carefully modulated so that she was always just a pace ahead of him, it was the elephant in the room with them.

 

“The Isles need a ruler, James. Pierce had grand designs for the position, but he is making a dog’s dinner of this whole thing. We need stability.”

 

“We do need a ruler,” Bucky agreed easily, sweeping off back toward the yard. “But it doesn’t have to be _her_.”

 

Satisfied that his intentions had been sufficiently conveyed, he returned to Peter’s workshop. While not quite his excitable self just yet, the boy had recovered some of his good natured chatter in Wanda’s presence – both of them carefully watched, as always, by Pepper.

 

After his long silence, the Outsider stood at Bucky’s elbow and said “Overseer Toomes was not being entirely honest with you or the Admiral.”

 

“Oh?”

 

He saw Wanda watching him curiously, but his darling girl brought no attention to the fact that Bucky now appeared to be muttering to himself. It was too late to deny it, not to her – most the of the Loyalists believed that his stay in prison had done something to his mind, and it had, but that wasn’t why he spent so much time talking to thin air.

 

“Mister Parker made the mistake of confessing to visions, glimpses of the Void seen in dreams,” the Outsider informed him blandly.

 

Glancing at him sharply, Bucky said “And why would you do such a thing? You told me before that viewing the Void at their age would be _bad_ for them.”

 

Idly, the dark god traced the shape of his mouth with the edge of one fingernail. Bucky refused to find it distracting – nothing good could possibly come from going down that pathway. “I said that it would be dangerous for their _conscious_ minds to see it,” the Outsider corrected, peering at Peter with an unreadable expression. “Mister Parker has a destiny that I do not entirely understand at this time, Bucky.”

 

He blinked. “I didn’t even know that was possible. I thought you see everything?”  

 

“It’s rare that I can’t, but some people have fates that warp even my perception at the edges, to greater or lesser degrees. Peter Parker now possesses the greatest warp of them all. I do not know how he will arrive to his position or even what exactly that position is, yet. Only that it is very important and that his place within the universe can even cause the Void itself to bend around him, slightly,” the Outsider admitted. “You, for example – I can see your yesterday and all the yesterdays that came before, but I can’t say for certain that you will live through the night, or through the next.”

 

Well, that was utterly chilling. “Can you do anything to stop it?”

 

There is a long pregnant pause, so heavy with the weight of some unknown knowledge that Bucky had to turn and look him directly in the eye. “I cannot,” he said finally, and Bucky did not even flinch away from him as he reached up to touch his cheek, a delicate press of his bloodless hand. “There are rules that even I must obey. If you drown tonight in the river, I am bound to do nothing more than watch you die.”

 

 _I am bound to do nothing_. He didn’t sound happy about that fact, either. For a moment, Bucky’s resolve to ignore this feeling in the pit of his stomach crumbled and he held the Outsider’s hand to his face, cupping the stiff deadened skin against his own. “Then I shall have to try very hard not to do that.”

 

“You may even succeed.” The Outsider drew his fingers away again, those fathomless eyes studying him, as though if he looked upon Bucky hard enough, he could force his ultimate fate to reveal itself.

 

The moment was broken as Pepper left the children to speak with Bucky again. “Do I need to take the children to Happy?”

 

“Nothing so dire, Virginia,” he said, with the barest attempt at smile.

 

“Good,” she said, relieved. “I’ll set up a room for Wanda in the Tower, with me.”

 

Bucky frowned, concerned at having her even that far away from him after so long apart. “I…”

 

Pepper leaned forward and said, very quietly “I know that you would prefer a different arrangement, but it would not be seemly to have her roomed with a grown man, even when he is a very loyal servant.” Another subtle reminder, but at least Pepper was sympathetic. “She’ll be with me, Bucky. There’s only one entrance into the Tower and it’s right across from your window.”

 

“Very well,” he said, unhappy but aware that she was giving him an easy solution to this problem. Glancing at the sun slowly making its way toward the other side of the riverbank, Bucky added “Happy and I should probably get going. We’ll have your lunatic back in a jiffy.”

 

“Not _my_ lunatic,” Pepper huffed, with a twist to her mouth that betrayed her.

 

“Hm,” Bucky said, deliberately doubtful just to tease her. “My lady! It is time to say goodbye now. Ah, wait a moment. Let me talk to Peter first – just for a minute, my lady, I promise.”

 

“I-I promise I shall do better, Lord Protector,” the boy vowed earnestly when Bucky had pulled him aside into the dim coolness of the shop, wide honey-brown eyes imploring him for mercy. “I promise I shall better my manners for our Lady Wanda and I will learn the Strictures properly.”

 

A nearly imperceptible shudder went through Peter as Bucky reached out to gently pet his hair. “Never mind any of that,” he said lowly. “You won’t need that garbage, Peter, you have more important things to do.”

 

“I do?” Peter gulped, eyes wider than before.

 

“Oh yes, Peter,” Bucky murmured, wrapping a conspiratorial arm around his thin shoulders and squeezing him against his side. “Someone must watch out for my lady while I’m away.”

 

“You-you want me to protect Wanda?”

 

“Of course,” he said easily, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. “I would trust her with no one else. Take good care of her, lad.”

 

“I will, sir!” It was painful, how straight and rigid he made his spine, trying to look as large and tall as he could. “I won’t let anything happen to her!”

 

“I know you won’t,” he said warmly, and turned with arms outstretched for the little lady herself. “Come and say goodbye.”

 

She pressed impossibly close to him, as though she could crawl into his jacket and stow away there. “You’ll be back tonight?”

 

“Maybe not until nearly morning,” Bucky whispered, rocking her gently the way he did when she was three minutes old and they had to call Tony in after realizing Natasha was no longer conscious in the stuffy, overcrowded room. “Please don’t wait up for me, darling. Miss Pepper will have a lovely room made up you – perhaps you can persuade her to give you a bath and I’ll see if I can find you some new clothes, yes?”

 

“Okay,” she said unhappily. A handful of stray tears dropped onto his collar.

 

“My brave lady,” he said, wiping them off her cheeks. “Please don’t cry. When you wake in the morning, I’ll be here.”

 

Wanda nodded and finally released him, clutching onto Pepper’s black skirt instead as she watched him leave – followed, though she did not know it, by the Outsider every step of the way.

 

As he usually did, the Outsider vanished the moment the moment Bucky stepped into Happy’s boat. The little skip was not suitable for them to have a conversation with each other unless they wished to be overheard for half of it, anyway. What he did not expect was for his eerie watcher to remain hidden even after Happy left him at Romanov’s Bridge.

 

When he did finally appear, Bucky nearly stabbed him. Granted, it was only a butter knife, but still.

 

“Are you…making a sandwich?” the Outsider asked slowly, turning to look at their unexpectedly lavish surroundings to staring – somewhat judgmentally – at the knife smeared with butter pointing at his throat. The unconscious owner of the house had been rather rudely pushed onto the brocade sofa.

 

“One of us has been up for over twelve hours, most of that running around this Void-forsaken nightmare city,” Bucky said, grumpy from hunger and acid burn from the river krusts that coated his abdomen and had eaten away half of his shirt. “When do you think I had time to eat? You do know that’s a thing I must do sometimes?”

 

“Her Majesty was provided with food at the Golden Cat.” It was definitely not his imagination that the Outsider spoke Wanda’s formal address with a touch of dry humor behind it. “You could’ve eaten then.”

 

Bucky stared at him. “I’m not certain if you’re being humorous or actually insulting me,” he said finally. “Did you really just suggest that I should’ve taken food from my daughter’s mouth?”

 

“Ah, I wondered if you ever actually acknowledge that out loud. I find it very strange that you are unwilling to claim her.” Bucky’s fists clenched. “I find it even odder still that the entire court is perfectly willing to accept a ruler they all know to be illegitimate.”

 

Flipping the folding blade’s edge outwards took next to no thought by then and the paintings on the wall rattled as Bucky shoved the smaller man against it. “I don’t care if you are a god,” Bucky whispered, mouth pressed next to the Outsider’s ear. “Call my Empress a bastard again, and I will _find a way_ to kill you.”

 

“Of that, I have no doubt at all,” the Outsider said, peering up at beneath his blond fringe. He might look like an innocent – barely old enough to be called a grown man – if not for the row of shark-like teeth revealed by his grin. Gently pushing the blade away from his neck, he added “But not tonight.”

 

They do not speak again until Bucky has slipped out through the balcony and onto one of the nearby roofs, and then he is too busy Blinking up the pylons of the bridge for conversation. At the top of the bridge, the long ropes of cable stretched out before and behind him, Bucky stopped to take in the view.

 

The setting sun bathed the remains of the city in blazing orange light, the bright whiteness of the rat-lights glimmering upon the darkening water in a crude man-made imitation of stars. The clock tower thrust above all the other buildings on the north bank, angular and admittedly a little ugly. This far from the city itself, the awful stench of sickness and decay and whale oil was much harder to detect.

 

Other than his daughter’s face, it was the only beautiful thing he’d seen that day.

 

Sighing, Bucky watched the sunset paint the half-ruined city like some kind of divine artist and said “Natasha and I knew before Wanda was born that we didn’t plan to be together. The nobles simply wouldn’t stand for it. But she eventually had to admit to her advisers that she was expecting a child and they gave us two choices. I could claim her, but then I’d sign over her rights to the throne and we’d both be essentially exiled back to my home in Serkonos. Or I could shut my fucking mouth and let them stare, and she could have the throne.” He laughed grimly. “It was no choice at all, really. Wanda Maximoff will be Empress of the Isles when this mess is over. Wanda Barnes would probably be starving in the street right now.”

 

“I have many doubts about the nature of men and women, Bucky,” the Outsider murmured finally, his pale form just as dull and bloodless as it was anywhere else. “But your devotion to her, I do not doubt.”

 

Bucky sighed, fitting the mask back over his face. “Let’s go kidnap the most annoying man in the Isles.”

 

Normally he wouldn’t have said that – not the ‘annoying’ comment, he stuck by his belief that Anthony Stark was the most irritating man ever born – but Bucky wouldn’t usually have to resort to kidnapping him. They had known each other for over a decade. Tony was the Royal Physician and kept their Empress safe just as he did, though in a very different way.

 

But Pepper and Peter had disappeared shortly after Bucky broke out of prison, escaping the less than welcome appearance of the new Lord Regent, Alexander Pierce. They’d been separated from Tony by necessity, but Pepper couldn’t just run back through quarantines and plague-infested housing to tell him they were safe and alive and there were now a lot of rumors circulating through the city that Bucky had…well, the nice ones said that he’d taken them and was holding them for ransom to Pierce. The much less nice ones said that Bucky was systematically executing every member of the Empress’s former household staff and that he’d slit their throats and dumped them into the river over in Draper’s Ward.

 

They needed Tony’s expertise and his knowledge of Pierce’s accomplices, but Bucky didn’t know how much belief he carried in these rumors or what his reaction would be if he saw him.

 

Bucky hissed with irritation from the edge of a rooftop and released the trigger on one of his precious few sleep-darts, the needle tip sinking into the arm of the guard patrolling the walkway. Only one up here at roof access – it was not a foolish mistake, but it was a mistake, regardless. Crouching low, Bucky could see figure of the Royal Physician pacing through the makeshift greenhouse, muttering to himself. From the rat diagram on the chalkboard wall at the other end, he would guess Tony was working feverishly on a cure for the plague.

 

He was going to have to teach the man to keep a knife on him or something, because his actual reaction to seeing a masked man with a weapon was to sigh deeply. “I told him adding the guards was useless,” he muttered, sounding put-upon, brown eyes slanting down the door leading back his private rooms, where more guards were obliviously patrolling the hallways. “Absolutely useless.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made Natasha and Bucky estranged because this will ultimately be a shrinkyclinks story and I can't picture Natasha being told that she isn't allowed to marry him and take that lying down unless they'd already broken up. Regardless, they both liked and respected each other a lot and her death was a serious loss for him and their daughter.


	3. The Royal Physician, part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Tell him if he really wants to meet me, he can start by being a bit more interesting."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really enjoy getting to write Steve as Dumb Bitch in "i love you, baby", but it's even more fun writing him as Crazy (Or Am I?) Bitch here.

 

“I told him adding the guards was useless,” he muttered, sounding put-upon. “Absolutely useless.”

 

Bucky was both relieved – and distantly amused – when Tony flicked out a small switchblade. The mask hid his face, but Peter and Happy already informed him that his voice was still very recognizable, which was why Bucky deliberately dropped his tone as he said, “Do you really think that will stop me, Stark?”

 

“Probably not,” Tony acknowledged, with a grim smile that pretty much described exactly the way Bucky felt just then. His hold on that knife was more liable to get himself stabbed than it was to fend off an attacker. Bucky made a mental note to give him lessons on actually using it on someone who intended real harm. “But I feel like it’s probably bad form to just let you walk in here and kill me.”

 

“Not on my agenda today,” Bucky remarked, releasing the Blink so that he burst back into the room directly behind Tony.

 

The man jumped and tried to turn around, but it was too late. Hooking his left arm across Tony’s throat and quickly squeezing, Bucky used the right to reach down and clamped down hard on the wrist holding the knife until it clattered to the floor. Tony thrashed wildly, convulsing as he tried to fight the chokehold, but he was already losing the oxygen supply to his brain. “Go to sleep,” Bucky hissed in his ear, “Go…to…sleep…”

 

He’d forgotten to drop his voice, though.

 

“Jayyyyy-mmmmes,” Tony gasped out, eyes briefly going wide with shock and giving one last violent twitch before his body went limp and he was finally unconscious.

 

Grimacing, Bucky shifted his hold to slowly lower Tony to the ground, improvising the man’s own belt as a makeshift restraint around his arms. He didn’t necessarily want to tie him up, but there was no reliable way of knowing how long it would take Tony to return to the waking world again. If they were in the boat when it happened, he had nothing to worry about – Tony’s only means of escape would be jumping straight into the river and he was certain Happy would be able to convince him to stay – but he wasn’t sure what Tony would do if he awoke before then.

 

The Outsider watched as he rummaged around the workroom, first locating the papers Tony was currently working on scattered around the workbench – like the chalkboard, they were filled natural philosophy language that went way over his head – and then looked for the leather case that Tony had near him at all times. It contained all of his most important work, things he deemed important enough to save. In the old days before Natasha’s death when they all lived at the palace, keeping track of this object was Peter’s sacred duty and the boy was often found following Tony through the curtained halls, both small hands clutching the handles of the case.

 

After several long moments of anxiety, examining every table in the laboratory/greenhouse, Bucky finally checked the back of the room where Tony’s formal desk was sitting, along with what he originally assumed was some kind of drafting table. The desk was so neat and tidy that Bucky was absolutely certain it was rarely used, with nothing left upon it but a tray that held the remains of Tony’s dinner, picked at and half-eaten, a silver pot with dregs of cold coffee sitting at the bottom, and a nearly empty bottle of scotch with an unused glass.

 

The drafting table came out from the wall and sat at a right angle to the desk, creating an L-shape and making that particular corner a small enclosed space hidden from the rest of the room, only accessible by going around the other side of Tony’s desk. Following this path brought Bucky to the realization that while the table was covered in idle scribbles and partially completed drawings, that was not its real purpose.

 

A small bed had been set up beneath the drafting table – not a haphazard cot thrown together, the table had been built with this use in mind. A bed frame had been built into the lower half of it, where normally there would be empty space, still neatly made with a quilt tucked beneath the feather mattress. Atop the quilt was Tony’s leather briefcase, it’s brass clasps partly open.

 

Tony had a full adult-sized bed down one flight of stairs and down the hall from this room, not that it saw a lot of use. He tended not to do much sleeping in general, but especially if he was working on a project. But Peter liked to be close to him, no matter what was happening, and he wouldn’t be so irresponsible as to force him to stay up at all hours of the night, even if Tony did.

 

Moving to close the brass clasps, he lifted the case, revealing the edge of a silvergraph frame. It was Pepper, softly smiling with her hair pulled up elegantly and pearls around her throat. For a brief moment, Tony’s love and grief for them was almost a physical presence within that room, choking Bucky.

 

Then the Outsider touched his arm. “I believe you are on a time limit.”

 

He turned and stared at the room around them. The diagram of the rat on the chalkboard was covered in notations that Bucky barely understood, written in Tony’s cramped, illegible shorthand. Almost helplessly, he picked up the case and said quietly “Why me? Why did you pick me?” He gestured around the workroom, evidence of genius all around them. “Why not Tony? Or anyone else, really? Someone smarter than me? Someone will real power?”

 

The Outsider’s eyes narrowed, as though annoyed, the blackness not quite as noticeable or lustrous as it was in the light of the setting sun. “Anthony Stark will arrive at his destiny whether I help him or not. Having access to me would not change that.” Looking bored, he gestured to Tony’s unconscious body, still tied up on the floor. “I chose you because I find you fascinating. I cannot say the same for him. If I gave him my mark, I know exactly what he’d do with his power: study and attempt to recreate them with his ‘science’.”

 

“Would that be such a bad thing?” After a moment’s thought, Bucky tucked the silvergraph of Pepper into Tony’s case, too, along with his current notes, and hefted the man up.

 

“He would only be distracting himself from his real purpose,” the Outsider said, sounding almost prim. “I want to be entertained, Bucky, and he is too predictable.”

 

“He would find that accusation very offensive,” Bucky replied with a small laugh.

 

“Hm,” is all the god said in return.

 

It was a little more difficult getting around while carrying someone that wasn’t conscious. For one thing, Tony wasn’t like Wanda – he couldn’t do the work of hanging onto to Bucky himself, which Bucky discovered meant that he could longer simply Blink to the edge of things and pull himself up while holding Tony. He pulled a muscle in his upper shoulder, frantically trying to claw himself onto a roof without letting Tony fall to his death.

 

He was sore, sweating, and out of breath by the time he reached the lower tunnel where Happy was docked, stumbling so hard on his landing he nearly fell into the river. Luckily, Happy was there to quickly take Tony from him. He saw the belt wrapped around Tony’s arms and exclaimed, “Was that necessary, James?!”

 

“Didn’t know when he’d wake up,” he said, rotating his arm with a groan of pain. “Couldn’t have him trying to escape – pretty sure he knew who I was.”

 

Long suffering, Happy got Tony settled comfortably and removed the belt, waiting just long enough for Bucky to get in before shoving off from the dock station down the river back to the Old Port District.

 

The sun had already dipped below the tall row houses and they still had four more miles to go when Tony finally woke up. Moaning in disorientation, since the boat began to rock with his flailing around, Tony saw him and croaked “You… _traitor_ …”, immediately coughing afterward, great heavy gasps that used all the space in his lungs. Bucky flinched, eyeing him closely. “Tell me…why…I shouldn’t kill…you…”

 

Lifting the mask from his face, Bucky said “Because if you do that, you’re going to have to explain to Virginia why I didn’t come back with you. Peter will be easier, you know he’ll believe anything you say, but I think Virginia would always at least suspect it was you.”

 

“Vir-?” Tony gripped the side of the boat, hard, and probably got splinters for his trouble. “You-Pep and the kid? They’re still alive?”

 

Bucky can’t help but look a little hurt and reproachful, even given the kidnapping. “You honestly believed that I would kill them?”

 

Tony looked and him and shook his head. “I’m not dumb enough to believe that story about you killing Natasha, but…You haven’t spent months seeing what it’s like, James. This whole city has gone crazy – I’m not sure what I believe anymore.”

 

“I’ll let Virginia tell you her own story, but she is very much…” He trailed off suddenly as he realized that the Outsider had appeared behind his left shoulder, the unsettlingly small bones of his chest pressed against his back. His gaze drifted away from Tony’s face to stare at this being who plagued him night and day.

 

They locked gazes, Bucky with eyes narrowed in suspicion and the god with an infuriating smirk, almost smug, until Tony’s voice brought him out of it. “What are you looking at?"

 

“Hm?” Bucky said, immediately jerking his head back to Tony. “What? Nothing.”

 

It would be unconvincing for someone of average intelligence – for Tony, that was almost laughable. His dark eyes took Bucky in, and before he could think of concealing it, he spotted the ink-black mark tattooed into the back of his left hand. “He’s Chosen you,” he breathed, fascinated and eager. “Of course, back at the house, when you – is he here right now?”

 

“Who?” Bucky asked dangerously, with a hint of a snarl.

 

“James, don’t play dumb with me-”

 

“Anthony Stark has searched old temples beneath the city and ruined subbasements in the Flooded District. He performs disgusting rituals beneath the old Abbey,” the Outsider murmured in Bucky’s ear, like a lover. “Because he believes there are specific words and acts that can compel me to appear before him.”

 

“He is here right now – you’re not even listening to me. What’s he saying?”

 

“Tell him if he really wants to meet me, he can start by being a bit more interesting,” the Outsider hissed, broad palms spreading out across the width of his shoulders. His lips were nearly touching Bucky’s skin and a  _very_  disturbed part of his brain wanted to know what all those sharp teeth would feel like if he bit that spot, just below his ear, or if Bucky kissed him, what it would feel like then.

 

The saner – and thankfully much larger – part of him wondered if he could possibly get away with pushing a god over the side of the boat and into the dirty water of the Wrenhaven River. “There is no one else here, Stark,” he said, through gritted teeth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 

“You have the mark of the Outsider,” Tony said, stubborn and insistent. “I watched you doing magic, James. Does he talk to you? What does he say?”

 

Bucky shook his head and flatly repeated “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 

Tony pouted like a spoiled child, but something in his face apparently told him that Bucky would offer no more on the subject.

 

Bucky seethed silently and resisted the urge to glare over his shoulder. It was one thing for some of the lower staff at the Hound Pits to whisper among themselves that the Lord Protector talked to himself – it was a completely different matter for him to give interviews on the Outsider to Tony Stark. He was going to have to find something to cover his hand with in the future.

 

Luckily Virginia Potts was there waiting on the crumbling steps to save him.

 

Tony leaped out of the boat before Happy had even properly docked against the shore, wading through the water with single-minded focus toward the figure waiting for them, the light of one of her preciously saved beeswax candles softly illuminating her face and lighting up her red-gold hair.

 

Which she instantly dropped to the ground the moment she saw Tony wading toward her, wet almost up to the waist as he crashes through the water. “I thought you were dead,” he sobbed, pulling her against him. “Pep, I couldn’t  _find_  you and…and where’s Peter?”

 

Pepper drags him out to the makeshift workshop, Bucky trailing behind with his bundle of Tony’s things and the package of dresses he’d managed to salvage from the wreckage of the buildings around Tony’s house, hastily wrapped in the remains of a burlap sack and tied up with kitchen twine. He’d even managed to find one in deep scarlet red, which was Wanda’s favorite color. The navy blue Pepper would have to mend a little – the rats had chewed through part of the white lace collar, but he was certain she could fix that.

 

The fatigue started to set in a very real way for Bucky – he was not exaggerating earlier. His day started around dawn and it was spent racing around half the city, carrying people who needed him to protect them, and…sort of being shot? It was a graze, but he’d definitely felt the bullet tear into his skin. His chest simultaneously burned and itched from whatever horrifying liquid the river krusts spat out and that shirt was a straight lost cause.

 

But he wanted to make sure they were okay for the night.

 

Tony was crying, the silent, devastated tears that only the sheer agony of relief could bring as Pepper brought him into the workshop and showed Tony the little iron bedframe set up in the corner where Peter was sleeping and he immediately picked the child up and held him, shuddering and kissing his hair even as Peter started stirring.

 

Bucky left them to it, the moment more private than he was willing to witness, nearly sobbing himself when he realized there were four floors between him and his bed in the attic of the Pits. He consoled himself with the idea that he would make a stop at the shared bathroom on the second floor before attempting to crawl up to sleep. He wasn't going to fall to the mattress in clothes he'd worn walking through plague-infested buildings, been shot in, slipped into the river in (twice), and snuck through the dusty, disused corners in.

 

His exhaustion went from heavy to unbearable by the time he'd forced himself to climb the staircase to the second floor, and it was the Outsider pulling at his arm that prevented Bucky from stumbling into a wall as he attempted to locate the bathroom door. He was barely aware that the Outsider was not leaving the room as he undressed, slow and clumsy, throwing his ruined shirt into a bin for Cecelia, the under-maid, to rip up into rags for cleaning later. He couldn't honestly muster the energy to care.

 

The tub filled with great big glugs of water, still sort of earthy and weedy-smelling from the process of being filtered from the Wrenhaven, steam curling off the surface, and the moment Bucky sank into it, he realized he'd made a mistake. The hot water burned at the red, sensitive patches of damaged skin on chest - an error he likely wouldn't have made if Bucky had his full faculties with him.

 

He yowled, half-crying at the pain, which was almost like the acidic spit of the krusts being poured over his chest all over again and resisted the urge to leap out of the water. There was a quiet exasperated sigh behind him, and Bucky yelped with renewed pain and alarm as a small hand fisted itself into his hair and despite its slight size, lifted his upper body from the stinging burn of the water. The other small hand plunged into the tub and his lower body registered a rapid drop in the temperature that caused him to sigh with relief, both as his skin was no longer burning and the Outsider released his uncomfortable grip on Bucky’s hair.

 

The sudden absence of pain combined with his reclined position caused Bucky to slip into a doze, during which he heard another exasperated, slightly louder, sigh. His eyelids were closed, but Bucky felt that small hand again in his hair, this time gently scraping over his scalp, accompanied by the smell of castile soap that made Bucky wrinkle his nose even in the drowsy state he was in. He dipped his head beneath the water long enough to rinse it out and went back to napping-but-trying-not-to-actively-sleep.

 

He wasn’t sure how long he remained there – occasionally, he would manage to pry his eyelids open and something was wrong with his sight, because when he looked at the Outsider directly, he was young and slim and blonde, the way he always was. But if he only glimpsed him out of the corner of his fuzzy vision, the god’s form became an amorphous figure that never held a single shape. He was delicate and fey, he was a mountain of muscle, he was a chilling shape of writhing shadows with only white holes for his eyes and sharp teeth, he was a creature of stone and knives and blood. He was all of those things in every moment.

 

That same sane part of his brain from earlier was telling Bucky he needed to move, to leap out of the tub and get away from this sinister figure. But the sane part of him was mostly asleep just then, and if he closed his eyes he could just pretend it wasn’t happening.

 

There was something wrong with his hearing too, Bucky realized.

 

The Outsider was speaking to him, or perhaps just murmuring to himself, his fingers rubbing with an almost sensual grace at his neck and shoulders.

 

When Bucky was awake enough to concentrate on it, all he heard was the eerie fizzing rumble that Bucky associated with the runes that bore his mark – associated with him and the Void in general. If he let himself drift just a little more…and a little more…he could hear his usual eerie voice, the words barely distinct enough for him to understand.

 

“…to be very…Bucky…a hundred ways, a thousand…before you secure...then there’s…thinks she’s already won, but she…and overestimates…can’t directly, though. I can see the irony of…saving your daughter...”

 

Bucky’s head lolled toward him at even the vague mention of Wanda, still more asleep than awake.

 

“But I’ve ensured that Barton will pay for his regrets,” the Outsider whispered. “His…careless with…won’t have the luxury…I’ve gotten his curiosity…Barton will save her or die trying.”

 

The night grew deeper and eventually the Outsider prodded his sore shoulder and murmured the only thing that could possibly get him to leave the relaxation of the water (and his small, stiff fingers digging into Bucky's sore muscles). “Wanda will be worried if you are not in your room in the morning.”

 

He wouldn’t usually leave his clothes behind for Cecelia or Lydia to pick up after him, but he was going to have a hard enough time climbing two more staircases.

 

“Outsider,” he slurred, and leaned forward to let himself cut his mouth on the shards of teeth hidden behind that beautiful pair of rose-pink lips.

 

Bucky was so deliriously tired, and the Outsider held himself to such a perfect level of stillness, that it felt almost as though he dissolved into him for a just a moment, the room around them disappearing. Or perhaps that simply came with the experience of slipping a piece of yourself into the Void.

 

Gently, the god’s delicate fingers pushed him away. Bucky’s lower lip was bleeding, and the unfathomable darkness of the Outsider’s eyes left him feeling horribly seen and exposed, his mind separated from each of its layers and laid out before him. _I have seen your yesterday, and all the yesterdays that came before._

 

“I’m sorry,” Bucky muttered. As usual, he couldn’t identify the expression – or lack thereof – on his face, but he was just coherent enough to realize he’d crossed some kind of line, that there was some kind of instinctual taboo that he’d broken.

 

The Outsider did not respond.

 

Bucky didn’t know what it meant, when he collapsed onto his mattress and felt his slender, rigid bones curling up against his back again. Eyes closed, he softly pleaded, “Don’t leave.”

 

He never breathed the way humans do, but his voice rustled the damp strands of hair at the back of Bucky’s neck. “I wouldn’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We won't be getting to Steve's perspective until my favorite part of the game's story line. 
> 
> I am seriously having such a good time writing this!


	4. The Lady's Last Party

Just after dawn, Bucky was dimly aware of a small body wriggling onto the bed right in front of him, much too light to be the Outsider. “Daddy,” Wanda whispered, barely daring to breathe the word. “Can I stay up here?”

 

“Mmm,” Bucky groaned, shoving his face further into his pillow. She let out a quiet giggle as Bucky threw an arm over her, trapping her next to him.

 

He fell back to sleep before she even stopped laughing.

 

Hours later, he rolled over, face pressed to the Outsider’s bony sternum. Groaning again, Bucky slowly allowed the world around him to wash over him. The drone of the district announcements from the speakers outside the bar. His own damp breathing against the not-quite-fabric of the Outsider’s suit. The sound of Lydia and Cecelia talking together as they hung up the laundry. A gentle rustling and the scribble of a pencil over cheap paper from Wanda at the little desk in the corner.

 

He kept his eyes closed, but he doubted there was any use in pretending that he was still sleeping. An all (or mostly all) knowing being was probably aware of the difference between awake and asleep. A chill went up his spine as stiff slender fingers began stroking through his hair.  His fingers, like the rest of the Outsider, were much sturdier than they looked at first glance. The body in his arms was about the same size as a slightly smaller than average woman, but it _felt_ strangely heavy and solid, as though whatever the Outsider was made of was significantly more dense than whatever humans are made of. Like the difference between holding a sword made of iron or a sword made of steel.

 

Okay. So, kissing him was bad, but touching him was not? Or…was it just that Bucky was not allowed to touch the Outsider, but not the other way around?

 

“I’m sorry,” he repeated softly, keeping his voice low so that Wanda would not find him talking to himself in the bed.

 

The Outsider was silent for so long that Bucky was certain he wasn’t going to answer him at all. Slowly, fingers trailed down Bucky’s neck, sending another chill through him that had nothing to do with the cold. He bit down a noise, fingers tightening around the Outsider’s narrow hips. “I am…uncertain that you will believe me, but I think there’s something I must tell you,” he said finally. “My perceptions are far beyond any human’s understanding, which I’m certain you already know.”

 

“But…?” Bucky whispered, shifting on the pillow to be able to see into the endless night of his eyes.

 

“I still possess the equivalent of human emotions,” the Outsider admitted. “Often I have no...purpose, no use for them, but I am capable of feeling them.”

 

“That doesn’t shock me,” Bucky said quietly, slowly stroking a hand along his spine, his small heavy bones hard beneath the delicate appearance of his flesh. Then a word in that sentence stuck out in his mind. “…Still?”

 

The Outsider cupped his face, thumbs brushing his cheeks. Bucky’s heart raced at the sensation of their mouths brushing against each other as he spoke. “I was born to a mother just as any mortal is. But on the day I died, I was born to something else.” He kissed his brow, and Bucky’s very bones quivered at his touch. “The people who created me as I am now did not intend for me to sustain this emotion, but it does not appear to be easing, Bucky.”

 

“I can’t pretend to mourn that,” was Bucky’s reply. He pressed the Outsider’s hand against his chest, over his heart. “Do you honestly think I’d deny you anything?”

 

“That is my concern,” the Outsider admitted. “And my desire.”

 

Bucky grinned and kissed his jaw. “I can’t tell you my desires in front of my lady.”

 

“Hm…”

 

“Bucky?”

 

He flopped onto his back, grin still in place. “Yes, my lady?”

 

“You were making funny faces in your sleep,” Wanda chirped. She bounced onto the mattress, piece of paper in hand, unaware of the dark god blinking at her from behind him. “Do you like my drawing?”

 

Bucky stared at the paper. It was a little stick figure drawing of Wanda herself, the red ribbon in her hair rather unmistakable. The figure beside her was equally unmistakable, the black holes of his eyes matching the blackness of his suit. “I do,” he said sincerely, contemplating a tactful way to tell her that they would have to burn it. “Who is your friend?”

 

She climbed onto his lap, idly picking at his sleepshirt. “I was having a nightmare, but then the black-eyed man came to talk to me,” she said matter-of-factly. “He told me not to be sad, because you were okay, and told me where to find you when I woke up.”

 

“Is that so?” Bucky drawled, resisting the urge to glance behind him. “I love your drawing, my lady, but the black-eyed man is special. He’s one of those secrets that Mommy and I told you about.”

 

“Oh.” Her face fell. “Does that mean I can’t make any more drawings of him?”

 

“I’m afraid so, my lady. I shall treasure this one always, but you mustn’t make any more of them or tell anyone that you’ve seen him.”

 

“Okay.” She brightened almost as quickly. “Can I have my present now?”

 

“Yes, of course, my lady.” He smiled at her and tugged lightly on a lock of her dark auburn hair. “Tell Cecelia that she can bring my breakfast anytime, and I shall fetch it for you.”

 

The Outsider laid a hand upon his shoulder. “Give her a rat,” he murmured, and at Bucky’s startled incredulity, added “Not a plague rat, Bucky. Summon one with your powers. Give her a rat to keep her company.”

 

He made a face at the Outsider, plucking up the package of dresses he’d picked up for Wanda. “I summon dozens, I’ve never tried summoning just one.”

 

“You can,” the Outsider assured him, as they listened to Wanda hopping up the stairs two steps at a time.

 

“How?” he hissed, and then his daughter raced into the room, launching herself straight into his arms. He caught her, of course, because he always did.

 

She was thrilled with her new dresses, even the ones Pepper would definitely have to mend before she could wear them, and clearly believed that was her surprise. Bucky watched her dance around the room with excitement from his perch on the bed. “I’m glad you love them, my lady. But that is not your surprise.” He gestured for her to come closer. “Would you like to see more magic?”

 

“Yes!” Wanda said eagerly.

 

Bucky had to keep his face blank as the Outsider’s knees settled on either side of his hips. “The incantation you’re looking for,” he whispered, stirring all the muscles of his heart to a frantic pace. “Is _davay, krysa_.”

 

Repeating the spell yielded a single rat, just as promised, sitting in the palm of his hand. Bucky’s rats were nothing like the plague rats, mangy flea-infested vermin that scrambled through the streets and sewers, large and hungry. Every rat he’d ever summoned was a sleek, muscular creature with a healthy shiny coat and bright eyes, who obeyed all of his commands.

 

This rat was no different, maybe even a little more handsome – it reminded him a little of the Outsider, actually. Beautiful snow white fur and dark, keen eyes, the rat playfully nibbled Bucky’s finger, giving a friendly little squeak of greeting.

 

Wanda gasped with delight. “Oh! Oh, Bucky, can I hold him?”

 

“Of course,” he said easily, because the animal was tied to him and his orders. To the rat, he murmured “Say hello to Wanda, little fellow.”

 

She made a shocked, ecstatic little noise as the white rat gave another squeak of greeting, turning his small head to look at her and going willingly into her hands. “He’s beautiful!” she cooed. “It is a boy, isn’t it?”

 

“Yes, it’s a boy rat.”

 

“What’s his name?”

 

There Bucky hesitated. The rats were not permanent – they were not real animals and Bucky couldn’t hold them to this plan of existence forever. He didn’t want her getting too attached. But the Outsider’s weight behind him abruptly disappeared, to return again from a black cloud beside Wanda. He reached out a hand to stroke the small creature’s back. Briefly, a black mark appeared on the stark canvas of its white fur, blazing in the same image as the one on the back of Bucky’s left hand.

 

“He is permanent now,” the Outsider told him, looking down at Wanda with something Bucky didn’t dare to interpret as fondness. “But she must be the one to name him if you’d like him to be hers.”

 

“Why don’t you pick a name for him?” Bucky said, reaching out to comb his fingers through her hair.

 

Circling the room, the Outsider came back to sit beside him. “As long as you are still on the mortal plane of existence, the rat will never die unless he is deliberately killed. He will never sleep and never eat. Let him have some of her blood, just a few drops every month, and he will be the smartest creature in the Isles. There won’t be a single command he won’t understand.”

 

“I want to name him ‘Krysa’,” Wanda told him – told _them_ , though she didn’t know it, and wouldn’t for many years. “Like the words you said. It was pretty.”

 

The Outsider made a low noise, the closest approximate he could manage of a chuckle, a reluctant smile briefly gracing his features.

 

“A fine name for a rat,” Bucky said easily, and the Outsider made the noise again. “But do not let Overseer Toomes see Krysa.”

 

“Because he’s magic?” Wanda said, with a shrewdness that reminded him with painful fondness of Natasha. “And Overseers don’t like that?”

 

“That’s exactly right,” Bucky nodded. “I am probably not Overseer Toomes’ favorite person just now, so that would not be a good thing.”

 

Wanda was silent for a moment, petting her new friend. “…because of what he did to Peter, right? Because you wanted him to stop?”

 

“Yes,” Bucky said solemnly, at once proud and disturbed – as he often was – of her intelligence and skills of perception. Leaning in closer to her, he kissed her cheek and whispered, “He will not be doing that again, I promise.”

 

Krysa, perhaps able to sense his young mistress’ disquiet, aggressively nudged at her hand for attention, and distracted, she asked “Can I still show Peter?”

 

“Of course. Miss Pepper and Mister Stark are alright, too, but try not to let Cecelia or Lydia find him, especially on his own. They might mistake him for a street rat and try to get rid of him. Most people don’t like rats, my lady.”

 

And more and more, the creature reminded him of the Outsider.

 

“I think he’s fantastic,” she said defensively, holding Krysa to her chest protectively. To the rat, she murmured “You won’t let a dumb human catch you, will you, Krysa?”

 

To her enormous delight, the white rat shook his head, chittering at her sweetly and nuzzling her face. Maybe Bucky should’ve felt uneasy at this display of more than ordinary intelligence from Krysa the Rat, but all he felt was relieved (one of many in a long lists of signs that his life had become a fairytale disaster).

 

Wanda ran from the room to show off her new friend to Peter.

 

“She is special,” the Outsider said thoughtfully.

 

“I certainly think so,” Bucky agreed. “But I doubt I can be trusted to provide an objective opinion on that.”

 

Another smile, so brief he could nearly believe he imagined it. “Allow me to be the…hm…outside perspective,” he said, giving an ironic little smile that Bucky tried (and failed) not to adore instantly. “She is very special indeed. I am not yet sure how or why, but I believe that like Peter, Wanda has been blessed – and cursed – with the burden of a great destiny.”

 

Bucky looked at him, unsettled by this pronouncement. “You don’t know…not even a small glimmer of what waits for her?”

 

A strange expression crossed the Outsider’s face then, and Bucky had the odd impression that he didn’t really want to answer that question. “Her fate seems to be…directly tied to yours. I cannot know what will happen to her yet, because I still do not yet know what will happen to _you_. With every variation in outcome for you, her situation changes.” Meeting Bucky’s eyes, he said “There is only one thing I am certain of right now: I would try very, very hard not to die, Lord Protector. I cannot promise a happy ending for Her Majesty if you live, but I can guarantee that there won’t be one waiting for her if you die.”

 

“Duly noted, Outsider,” Bucky said grimly, rising from the bed.

\---

The Frost mansion was a glittering, gilded jewel in the middle of the Estate District. Even in these times, Bucky had assumed that this district was likely to be untouched, the overwhelming wealth of its citizens insulating them from any real consequences of the conditions of the greater city around them.

 

He was wrong – outside the walls of the manor, the Estate District around them was nearly overrun by rats and Weepers, the extra guardsmen hired for the Frosts barely able to hold the line of the property, never mind keeping the district itself under control. He’d nearly plummeted from the fifth floor railing of a balcony in one of the formerly grand apartments after touching down there only to realize the floor was packed with Weepers and the group had tried to rush at him all at once.

 

From the second floor of the Frost estate, Bucky watched the crowd of people, carefully keep out of the eyeline of the city guards. Down the hall from him, five guardsman had been knocked unconscious and tied up in the private drawing room, the result of his canvassing mission to figure out which of the Frost sisters had sold access to the Empress.

 

All around him, bored aristocrats in costumes pretended that the city was not crumbling around them. Some of them had stared and tittered at him, at his bold daring in dressing up as the Masked Assassin in the wanted posters all over Dunwall. If they only even knew.

 

Somewhere in this crowd were the three Frost sisters in costumes identical but for their color: Esme in red, Phoebe in white, and Sophie in black. Tony had not known which woman it was, only that it was a Frost sister who was responsible, but Bucky had found the evidence he needed to confirm her identity upstairs in her bedroom – the stupid woman had it written down in her diary. He was looking for Esme.

 

Well. He was supposed to be looking for Esme.

 

“You are…conflicted about killing her,” the Outsider observed, sounding mildly surprised by this fact.

 

“I’m good at fighting, that doesn’t mean I like it,” he muttered. “Murder is just intense fighting and I like it even less. She isn’t a real opponent – she’s an ordinary civilian.” He gave a tight, angry smile. “Esme wasn’t even interested in having a role in Pierce’s new administration. It was nothing more than an interesting diversion for her. Natasha is dead because Esme got _bored_.”

 

“There’s always that lord who spoke to you,” the Outsider pointed out, though he sounded almost as unconvinced as Bucky felt. “He promised to ensure Esme Frost was never your concern again. You would not have to kill her.”

 

Bucky made a dissatisfied noise in the back of his throat. “Giving her over to be another aristocrat’s plaything is hardly better than murder,” he said, scowling. He ran a restless hand over his hair. “In truth, I’m more worried that one day, Esme will get bored again, and this time it will be Wanda that pays for it. People like the Frosts are used to manipulation and getting what they want. I’m not sure he can really keep her contained forever.”

 

He tried to bring his hand to his mouth, realized that both his face and hands were currently covered and jerked them back down to his sides. “I-I think I have to kill her, Outsider. I can’t risk my daughter’s life on the distant hope that she’ll be well-behaved for the rest of her life.”

 

The Outsider gave no opinion on this decision, leaving Bucky to plan his dirty deed on his own.

 

Despite his function with the loyalists’ conspiracy, assassination was actually something Bucky actively tried to avoid whenever he could. The Pendletons notwithstanding, he’d managed it so far with high success.

 

In the end, the simple solution seemed the safest to him.

 

He went back through the front door, idly signing the guestbook to appear busy as he watched the woman in the red suit and mask walk toward the powder room. As he moved to follow her, he heard the Outsider’s quiet laugh at the signature marked fresh on the page, his passive contempt for these people on full display for anyone sharp enough to spot it.

 

_James Buchanan Barnes_

 

He waited until the moment she was about to close the door, before crooking his fingers and jerking down his left hand. Time slowed around him – not the Outsider, of course, but every other object in the room sort of grayed out and moved so slowly, it almost seemed not to move at all.

 

Catching the bathroom door as he stared into the frozen scarlet mask covering Esme’s face, he slammed it shut behind him and easily brought her down into a headlock. Unlike the guardsmen upstairs, he did not stop moments after Esme lost consciousness. His forearm locked around her throat for agonizing minutes, until Bucky was certain that she was dead. He didn’t like do it this way, stringing out her death in such a long, drawn out way but it was the only way he could think of without creating a large mess he wouldn’t be able to contain.

 

Her body hung in his arms in that distinct, heavy way that meant the brain controlling it had ceased to be. Bile rising in his throat, Bucky opened the door again, jammed the lock, and the closed it behind him.

 

Someone would find her eventually, but not before he was long gone.

 

He began walking directly forward to the garden entrance, spotted an Overseer with a music-box contraption, and immediately walked the other way. Even when he was not trying to call upon the Outsider’s power, the sound coming from that box they carried made Bucky’s head ache fiercely, none of his teeth fit in his mouth properly, and all his bones throbbed every time he went near them. He suspected this was because he didn’t _just_ do magic – the Outsider was part of Bucky.

 

He tried not to look like he was running from the estate, but as soon as he reached a corner of the garden dark enough to hide him, Bucky Blinked onto a neighboring balcony, grey and staggering before racing and leaping to the next building, then the next, then-

 

The Outsider’s hand captured him around the upper arm, jerking him back from a ledge he was preparing to jump from. “Stop,” he said gently, and the dissonance purring through his vocal chords settled something in Bucky’s roiling stomach. “Take a breath, Bucky, or you will injure yourself.”

 

With a quiet sob, Bucky grabbed him hard, pulling him into his embrace and tucking his face into the Outsider’s neck. “I killed her. I killed her.”

 

“I know.”

 

It would never have occurred to the Outsider to comfort him, provide platitudes or empty consolation, and in a way, that was better than anything he could’ve said. It was an impossible and painful situation, a gruesome task that had to be performed and there was no getting out of it. Words wouldn’t make it any less horrible.

 

He breathed wet and thick against the smooth skin of his neck. He was crying on the marble balcony of an abandoned building and the Outsider was holding him, humming that fizzing Void-song and stroking his hair like a lost child. Holding him so tightly that any human would be crying out in pain, but he made no protest.

 

Down the street, he heard shouting and panicked screaming as people ran from the Frost estate. Someone had found Esme’s body.

 

Gently, he pulled away from the Outsider’s embrace and continuing fleeing away from the manor. Bucky followed the Outsider down the murky Riverwalk as he searched for Happy’s boat, staring at his back and the head of pale blonde hair, shining like a dim star in all the gloom.

 

Shakily, Bucky whispered “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Outsider.”

 

That lightning quick smile of his made another brief appearance. “Talk to yourself instead?”

 

That managed to startle a laugh out of him. Bucky used another Blink to get right beside him, tugging on his hand and kissing him quickly on the mouth, heedless of the new cut it created on his lip. "Thank you." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is literally how I kill Lady Boyle every time, and it has never failed me. If you kill her in the bathroom, make sure that you place the body in the corner where it'll be behind the door, leave it open and walk away - no one ever notices.


	5. Return to the Tower

It was an hour from dawn by the time Happy got them back into the Old Port District – patrols were going up and down the river and he had to avoid all of the lights of the towers and bridges.

 

Fancy dressed in his party costume, Bucky tore the hateful thing off as he fell into bed. He felt the Outsider’s hand upon his back before drifting off to sleep. He barely moved when, just an hour later, Wanda burrowed her way beneath the covers. His tired mind was a bit confused by all the squeaking, but not confused enough to stay awake figuring out what it was.

 

Like the morning before, Bucky had slept until nearly noon. Unlike the morning before, Wanda was still asleep next to him, arms askew over her head and face mashed into the pillow below. Krysa, sleek and white, rested in the curve of her palm, his thin tail wrapped around her tiny wrist. As the Outsider had promised, he did not sleep but seemed very content to snuggle into her warm hand.

 

Bucky was not at all surprised to see the god himself standing beside his bed, hands neatly held behind his back.

 

“I suppose I have you to thank for this,” he whispered, reaching over to pull several locks of hair from Wanda’s mouth.

 

“Your daughter is very demanding,” was the answer he received.

 

Bucky laughed quietly. “I have become aware of that, yes.”

 

“You will have to kill the Lord Regent tonight,” the Outsider observed, neither pleased nor condemning, just a simple statement of fact.

 

He hummed. “I may.”

 

Sinuous and predatory, the Outsider’s draped himself, serpentine, across his legs. Bucky tried very hard not to think about how suggestive that pose was. Black, lightless eyes narrowed at him. “You are planning something.”

 

He shrugged. “Alexander Pierce committed treason. No one willing to do that is blameless in every other way.”

 

The Outsider continued to stare at him, chin resting upon his palm. “You are…much cleverer that I expected.”

 

Bucky suppressed his laughter for Wanda’s sake. “I’m…sorry that I’m not a big dumb goon, I guess? Is that what you were expecting?”

 

“No,” he said calmly. “I don’t Choose the stupid, Bucky. I wouldn’t have put in the effort if that was what I believed. But humans…lack a certain basic level of common sense, most of the time. They try to ask for my help, ask me to fix things. For them. For the people they care about. For the world.”

 

“That isn’t how this works,” Bucky muttered, staring up at the ceiling.

 

The Outsider did not smile, but his expression became somehow warmer and fuller, like the moon at its largest and brightest. “You may be the first of the Chosen to understand that.”

 

Bucky did understand. People, Overseers, said that the Outsider was the Great Liar, the Leviathan, the Black-Eyed Trickster, the Father of Temptations.

 

He was certainly tempting Bucky, but probably not the way the Abbey meant, and he had never told him a lie. Bucky had gotten the impression there were questions he’d rather not answer and there were times when he’d sidestepped or avoided speaking about some things directly, but as far as he were aware, he’d never lied or deliberately misled him.

 

He was frighteningly powerful but there were bounds to the way he was allowed to express that power. In the Void, anything was possible. He was the first and last authority in his own realm. But on the mortal plane, there were constraints. The biggest, as far as Bucky knew, were fate and free will. Destiny was beyond his or any other force’s control and the Outsider had repeatedly stated that he was forbidden from exerting control over the decisions of mortals. If an ancient entity could have ethics or morals as humans comprehended them, Bucky would even say he was morally opposed to it.

 

Bucky thought about how frustrating that must be for him, to endure generations of humanity pleading for his help and the Outsider, unable to aid them no matter how much he may have wished to, for thousands of years. But that made Bucky wonder…

 

“You can’t help me if I ask for it,” he said slowly. “Could you do the opposite? Could you make me fail if you wanted to?”

 

Letting his weight sit heavily upon Bucky’s legs, the Outsider rested his fair head against his thigh and closed his eyes briefly. “I could…not as such, no. Let us say that you asked me to help you kill the Lord Regent, hypothetically.”

 

Bucky hummed, agreeing to the premise of the discussion.

 

“I would do nothing, just as I would regardless. Perhaps you would fail, perhaps you would succeed. Die, live, victory, defeat. Whatever outcome you came to, I could punish you afterwards, if I desired it.” His fingernails prick against Bucky’s leg, prompting him to meet his eyes. “People ask me for things all the time – murder, wealth, peace, blood, fortune. And in the asking, they open part of themselves to me. I can’t change the course of their life, I don’t have the ability to rewrite their destiny.”

 

Laying very still, he said “Why don’t I sense a ‘but’ at the end of that sentence? What do you mean punish them?”

 

“There was a woman who went exploring on the Pandyssian continent and found some very old and very profane texts. Things not meant for human eyes to see, things about me and about the Void,” he said candidly. “She became obsessed with both and slowly went mad, imagining herself as some sort of consort to me and killing the man she was already married to. In the book, she encountered a spell that would bring me onto the mortal plane and rend both the waking world and the Void to pieces. But in doing so, she opened herself up by asking for me, and I was…less than pleased to be treated like a courtier accepting her hand.”

 

“So what did you do?” Bucky asked, horrified. “She can’t just-she couldn’t just _bring_ the Void _here_!”

 

“It would be very bad,” the Outsider agreed in his languid drawl. “Which is why I removed her ability to read that book when I tore out her eyes.”

\---

Bucky wasn’t sure if what he was feeling was hysterical amusement or hysterical rage at the moment. The water lock up to the palace boathouse was not out of commission because Pierce had thought it strategically advantageous to shut it down – it was inoperable because the fucking machine that operated the lift had broken down and Pierce and his staff were so incompetent they needed Tony Stark to fix literally everything.

 

But they assumed that the water lock breaking down kept them safe. They assumed that no one was capable of scaling such high walls. This alone was further evidence of their incompetence in his mind. Bucky – the Man in the Mask – had already proven himself more than capable of feats beyond a normal man. The captain of the night watch had apparently decided that the lock didn’t need watching, because when Bucky was able to climb over the rail he paused to cast his Dark Vision spell and realized there were only two guards outside on the bridge to the courtyard.

 

“ _Temnoye zreniye_ ,” he muttered, waving his hand in a gesture that swept over the room.

 

 _It hunts, dies_ , a voice hissed in his ear, with an uncanny resemblance to the Outsider. The room fell into a sea of shadows and sepia tones, illuminated only be things that the vision deemed necessary for him.

 

He didn’t use it often – it painted a clearer picture of the areas within his immediate range, even through walls and doors, but it also made seeing things at a distance more difficult for him. Colors became indistinct and sounds were muffled by the low rumbling growl of the Void, so he preferred to use it sparingly.

 

Speaking of his wayward follower, Bucky thought, looking around him when the Dark Vision had faded, the Outsider had not returned when he and Happy docked outside the palace. It was not the first time, but it made him uneasy, nonetheless. He was becoming…perilously attached to his unearthly shadow.

 

He pulled Natasha’s heart out from his coat, expecting her to tell him hints of activity around the palace at the surrounding area, or news of the kingdom. Her voice was the one he obeyed at the High Overseer’s office, warning him that the room next door was full of kennels with trained hounds who would know the scent of an intruder like him. But the Empress, as she did in life, seemed to know where his thoughts laid without Bucky having to speak them aloud.

 

 _The ropes bit into his skin, cut his wrists, thin and fragile_ , she murmured in his ear, as though she were still beside him, tearing into courtiers with her whispered observations. _Neither his curses nor his pleas moved them._

 

“Who?” he asked out loud, pausing to stare out at the stark bright lights of the palace grounds.

 

 _We call him the Outsider, though that was not the name he was born to. He has had many throughout his existence_ , Natasha whispered. _Only fifteen summers old, but they tied up him like an animal and dragged him away to his doom. He screamed, but the villagers shuttered their windows and locked their doors when they took him away. No one came to plead for his life._

 

Bucky felt like he was watching Natasha die all over again, gripping the edge of the roof until his fingernails hurt. “Why?”

 

 _He was a strange child, even then, with no one left alive who loved him_ , the Empress said sadly, knowing sympathy in the soft echo of her spirit. _They tied him to an altar of stone and slit his throat. When his blood was cold, the child was gone and only a god remained. Before the sun was up, he’d slain every man and woman there._

 

“I thought the Outsider can’t kill people?” Bucky choked.

 

Natasha’s last response was simple, and chilling. _It was their destiny_.

 

Thoroughly shaken, Bucky leapt onto a ledge to begin searching for the opening that would get him into the palace. He knew just where he was going – Pierce was a man who liked order, but he also liked comfort and was somewhat vain. The Lord Regent wouldn’t settle for anything less than the former Empress’ apartments. Even after his brief time sharing her bed, Bucky knew the rooms well. He’d done a security check on them every single night he’d been in the palace since the day he was brought there.

 

Of course, the Outsider chose the moment he was digging through Pierce’s personal desk in the Empress’s bedroom – his daughter’s bedroom now, the miserable git – to appear right behind him. Bucky muffled a yelp and whirled around to face him, swearing under his breath.

 

“Fuck! Where have you been?” he hissed furiously, trying to slow his racing heart. “You’ve been gone for hours.”

 

The Outsider lifted a brow. “I said you were the most interesting person alive, Bucky. I never said you were the _only_ interesting one.”

 

 _He doesn’t look fifteen_ , Bucky thought, staring at the narrow shoulders beneath the lines of his dark suit. _But then again, he isn’t, is he_?

 

What does time mean to a creature who never dies or ages?

 

Bucky wondered if the Outsider already knew about his conversation with the late Empress and decided to assume that he did. “That still doesn’t answer where you’ve been.”

 

He was aware immediately after uttering that sentence that he sounded like a nagging hatter’s wife and blushed. The Outsider smirked, seemingly aware of that thought, but answered quite readily “Mutcherhaven District.”

 

“Mu-but that’s-that’s past the blockades,” Bucky said slowly. “It’s mostly a residential district. There’s nothing left there but streets filled with abandoned houses. What were you doing in Mutcherhaven?”

 

If the Outsider found his questions insolent, he didn’t say so. In fact, if Bucky didn’t know better, he’d say the god looked very satisfied with himself. “Took a stroll through a garden with an old friend.”

 

“Then what has you looking like a tomcat that ate a whole cage of canaries?”

 

“It was a lovely stroll,” the Outsider said, then leaned forward and deliberately bit him neatly on the chin, teeth prickling needle-sharp as Bucky's heart flipped over in his chest. “Don’t you have a job to do?”

 

He grunted. “Pierce was the one who did this,” he murmured, staring down at journal entities he’d found sitting in the desk. “The rats, the plague, all of those people dead, half of the city destroyed…this is _all his fault_.”

 

The Outsider was not the least bit surprised by that piece of news. But of course he wouldn’t be. “What are you going to do about it?”

 

It was extremely satisfying to watch Alexander Pierce being led to Coldridge Prison by Nicholas Fury, the city watch captain, and Maria Hill, the head of Tower security. It was amazing what getting the right material to responsible, trustworthy people could do. Probably they would hang him from the very noose meant for Bucky’s own neck – personally, Bucky thought throwing him into the Flooded District to live among the sadness and filth he created was far more fitting an end, but he was in no position to march up to Fury and suggest such a thing.

 

Luckily the admittance of Bucky’s innocence was in those diaries as well, so in a little more time, he’d be free and clear. At the time, he did not notice how quiet the Outsider had become. That wouldn’t occur to him until much later, when it was all over.

 

Back at the Hound Pits, everyone was in the mood to celebrate. The news of Pierce’s arrest had been broadcast on every announcement speaker in the city, so they were all waiting, drinks in hand, to make a toast on Bucky’s success.

 

When the toasting and general congratulations were over, he found himself sitting next to Wanda in a booth with the Outsider across from them, watching him in a somber silence that he couldn’t register just then. Miss Pepper had brought Wanda a ginger beer and she was coloring.

 

Bucky leaned heavily into the wall and draped an arm across her shoulders. A dull, throbbing pain was starting to build in his head, right behind the eyes. Barely sparing him a glance, she continued her coloring with worn-down pastels. “Bucky, are you okay?”

 

“Just tired, my lady,” he mumbled. He was having a more and more difficult time keeping his eyes open against the pain – it didn’t help that his vision was getting blurry and his stomach was starting to cramp with something like nausea but sharper, like he’d been trying to eat gravel. Tony had offered to get him another drink after the first, but he’d asked for only water and even that was making his stomach turn. He couldn’t stand the thought of actually eating something, though his lunch was hours ago.

 

Lifting his head took effort, but he tried to make his gaze focus on the smeared form of light and shadow that was the Outsider. “What…this…?” he slurred.

 

The Outsider had never looked more his age, all four thousand years of it.

 

A hard hand slapped him on the shoulder. Ross boomed “James, my lad, you’re looking a bit peaky. Happy, help Toomes and I bring poor James to bed. The man deserves his rest after the week he’s had.”

 

“Yes, sir – of course.” Somewhere in his mind, Bucky registered how uncomfortable Happy sounded, but he was more focused on trying to lurch away from Toomes’ sudden grip on his other shoulder.

 

He didn’t want the Admiral and the Overseer touching him. He wanted…he wanted... “…love? Wheraya?”

 

And he knew, oh help him, he knew. A cool heavy hand brushed his face. “Just relax, darling,” the Outsider murmured against Bucky’s cheek, sweet as any blessing ever given. “Try not to fight it.”

 

He let his eyes close, though Ross and Toomes weren’t exactly gentle with him, all but dragging him by the arms up all three flights of stairs to the attic. He gagged right outside the staff quarters on the second floor, but there was nothing in his stomach but liquor and water. It burned so fiercely it brought tears to his eyes and he hardly registered their exclamations of disgust. It was taking all his will just to remain conscious and they were fully carrying him by the time the group got all the way up to the attic.

 

Bucky fell hard when the two men tossed him forward, but instead of landing on the thin tick mattress he was expecting, his body hit the bare floorboards. He couldn’t summon the energy even to groan.

 

He heard Toomes’ voice somewhere in the nebulous space around him. “Happy, did the poison you gave him work its magic? Is he dead?”

 

Poison? Happy? Dead?

 

“It better have worked,” Ross grunted. “It cost us the rents payment for a full month.”

 

Happy touched his throat, fingers pressed to the weak pulse that seemed to choke off all his air. “Yessir. I believe James has breathed his last.” His voice was strange, stilted. “Just as you wanted.”

 

“You’ve done a fine job then, Happy.”

 

“Remember, we need the body,” Toomes said in a pompous tone. “If we come forward with the corpse of the man who murdered the Empress, we’ll be greeted as heroes.”

 

“It will grant us legitimacy,” Ross agreed. “We’ll be the men who rescued Wanda and brought down the Lord Regent and his assassin. You’ll see to the body, won’t you, Happy?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

Bucky’s body was going numb, losing the feeling from his mouth to his legs, right down to the tips of his fingers. The floor beneath him vibrated as they left the room. A vague shape in front of him knelt down beside him.

 

“I’m sorry about this, James,” Happy whispered, pulling a thumb beneath his eyelids to check his pupils. He was still breathing, such weak shallow puffs of air that Happy had to hold his hand right up to his mouth to feel it. “I only gave you half the poison. He was watching me and I knew they’d hurt Tony and Pepper if I didn’t agree to it. Maybe even hurt the kid. It was all I could think to do. But I think you’re strong enough to survive this.”

 

Right next to his ear, so sweet, lips so red, his voice playing on two different notes that plucked a string in Bucky’s mind right down to the sinew of his heart. “Don’t fight it, Bucky. You need to save your strength for other things." 

 

He didn't fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why are the spells in Russian? no particular reason, i thought it was a nice nod to canon. (also: "it hunts, dies" is literally what i thought the voice in Dark Vision was saying before checking months later and realizing that all of the powers audio effects are basically various clips of gibberish)


	6. The Flooded District, part 1

As the young assassin landed beside Bucky’s body in a flash of motion, the Outsider watched her carefully. The young woman glanced around her several times, as though she could sense his gaze upon her.

 

This was not wholly surprising for the Outsider.

 

Clinton Francis Barton was not the first of his Chosen with the ability to pass certain aspects of his gift to his followers – it did not escape the Outsider that it mimicked the way in which he gave them his own power – but Clint’s was particularly powerful in a certain way. The more cherished the follower was, the more certain unintentional aspects of his powers leaked through.

 

Kate Bishop was the most beloved, most loyal, most skilled of these followers, and the back of her neck prickled and stung in the Outsider’s presence.

 

Though his expression did not reveal it, even when alone, his mind was in chaos. He knew what was going to happen next, but it was what happened after that he was most concerned with and that, according to the universe, was a confused mess of possible outcomes. A deck of cards shuffled and dealt by invisible hands beyond even his own.

 

But only the Outsider possessed trick cards.

 

Kate began steering the vessel through the Rudshore Financial District – now known dismissively throughout the city as ‘the Flooded District’. She kept one eye on the river and one eye on Bucky’s gray, shivering form. He was begin to regain some consciousness, though not enough to pose any threat. Before his glazed eyes, they passed the wretched, crumbling ruins of what used to be some of the wealthiest business in Dunwall and approached one of the few buildings who interior had not yet collapsed upon itself, a massive brick building sitting in the filthy sludge that gave the Flooded District its name.

 

Another assassin landed upon the vessel to peer at Bucky. “Leave him be,” Kate said simply. “His fate is for Clint to decide.”

 

Oh, that was ironic. Was it ironic? Yes, in fact, it had layers of irony…

 

Far from a threat, Kate had to half-pull and half-drag Bucky onto a freight elevator up to the top level of the remains of Greaves Refinery.

 

Clint’s brows raised at the Outsider as he touched down onto the creaking metal balcony. _So, this is your favorite? This is the glory of the Outsider_?

 

The Outsider returned his silent question with an unfathomable stare. Kate stood at Clint’s side once more, her discomfort with the Outsider’s presence only known to himself and Clint.

 

Perhaps Bucky was not quite as unconscious as suspected. “You…Natasha…” he rasped, struggled to stay upright by leaning against the elevator cart. “You killed…”

 

“I did.” Clint agreed, without pleasure or apology. “My name is Clint Barton, which I’m sure you already know. And I know a great deal about you, bodyguard.” A gesture at the wrap on Bucky’s left hand. “Like that mark on your hand. Your friend, who talks to you.”

 

Bucky was suitably shocked when Clint raised his arm to show him the tattoo on his own left hand. “That’s right – I was favored by him, too. Once.” Carelessly digging through Bucky’s kit, he continued “What I don’t know is why the Outsider has allowed you to come here. I don’t like surprises, and he knows this.”

 

Bucky gave a low grunt of displeasure as Clint turned and tossed the whole kit – including the prized blade Peter made for him – over the railing, without the energy to summon the full force of his anger. Barton stared at him coolly. “He’ll grow tired of you, too, in time. He grows tired of us all. But I bet he didn’t tell you that.”

 

Looking the Outsider dead in the eye, Clint gave Kate a command: “Throw him in the hole and leave him there. He’s dangerous as a kitten.”

 

The dark-haired young lady did not argue with him, but Bucky thought she looked ill at ease with the order. He didn’t have time to study or contemplate this because he lost consciousness again.

 

The Outsider watched the proceedings dispassionately and Clint shook his head. “I knew it. I knew you didn’t love him.” He scoffed. “All that work, all that effort, and you’re just going to let him die.”

 

“If he dies, he dies despite my feelings, not because of their lack,” the Outsider replied woodenly. “You would toss him in that hole no matter what I say to you. If I plead, you will do it to see if I suffer. If I rage, you will revel in that rage knowing that the laws of this world forbid me to retaliate. If I do nothing, you will pity Bucky Barnes, that he loves such a hard-hearted demon.”

 

Clint’s chin tilted back to gaze at him. Barton, like most men, was taller than the forbidden god, but not by nearly as much so as Bucky. “I do pity him.” They stared at each other for a long breathless moment, before Clint finally said “After all these years, I think I finally do believe that you care after all. But you so often break your toys, Outsider. Perhaps I do him a kindness.”

 

“If he lives, he will come for you,” he said, without addressing his last statement.

 

“Oh, Outsider,” Clint drawl, twirling a large brass key on his pinkie finger. “I don’t just suspect it, I’m counting on it.”

\---

Above him, the sky was broken, a flat endless expanse with rubble drifting by. Around Bucky, the wind hollowed in the eerie nothingness at it whistled past the island of broken city on which he floated.

 

Gently, a cold heavy hand touched his face and Bucky looked up to meet the eyes of the Outsider. He no longer felt the pain of his living body in the Void, but so close to the agony of death by poisoning, Bucky could still feel shaky and weak.

 

“Why..?” he croaked, without the words to finish the question. He had so many.

 

“Why did I not warn you? Why did Ross and Toomes do this to you? Why did I not tell you about Clinton and his connection with me?”

 

“Let’s start with the first one.” He looked around at the crumbling marble and torn earth around them. “Can we not get out of here? You don’t usually bring me all the way to the Void.”

 

“Not just yet,” the god replied calmly. “The longer I keep your spiritual self here, the less time you have to suffer in your physical body and the longer I can delay your death.”

 

“I’m _dying_?” Bucky squawked, staring at him in horror.

 

“Some of your organs were beginning to fail, yes. I cannot prevent your spirit from leaving your body in death, but if I keep it here in the Void, I can give your body the chance recover in the physical world without you going into shock or choking on your own vomit.” The Outsider peered at him. “Would you prefer going back to believing you were unconscious? I need not keep you awake here if you’d rather not...see me, at the moment.”

 

Bucky sighed and pulled on his hand, heaving that small dense body onto his chest, his fair hair so stark against Bucky’s leather coat. He stroked that whitish gold hair a moment, then said “Tell me.”

 

Silence, and the Outsider traced a delight finger up his neck. “I cannot give you information which would dramatically change the direction of your life, the course that your future is already running,” he said finally. “ _Particularly_ if you cannot discover the information by any natural means. As for Ross and Toomes…”

 

He was silent for so long that Bucky said, “You don’t need to spare my feelings.”

 

“It’s not that. The truth is, I can’t know the why of it, Bucky. For the world of truths I possess, I still cannot read minds, cannot _know_ beyond doubt what is in someone’s heart. All I have are educated guesses.” It was he who sighed then, a low murmur of ocean song that made the familiar hairs on the back of his neck prickle. “Perhaps they did it to protect themselves, so that no one outside of their little group would know what terrible deeds they asked you to perform. Perhaps it was because they realized they were a single step from ruling the entire empire, and they knew you’d never allow them to use Wanda as their puppet empress. Maybe it was none of these things, perhaps it’s simply in the nature of man.”

 

“And Barton?” Bucky asked, voice stilted. “You never mentioned that the man who murdered Natasha was a man you Chose, Outsider. You have made us brothers in the occult, if not in blood, and I’m sure you know how vile I find that notion.”

 

“To make you brothers would place me as your father,” the Outsider pointed out dryly. “A role to which Clint may have once placed me, but for you is an idea which I find equally vile, I assure you.”

 

“You know my meaning!” Bucky snarled.

 

 The Outsider grunted and said, “You asked me once why I chose you, do you remember my answer then?”

 

He snorted. “You said you found me to be the most interesting person alive.”

 

“I’ve also told you that you have a destiny that is not entirely clear to me – this is still true, if you were going ask that next. I still have not seen how this situation will end, only possible outcomes. But these two facts are related to each other. You are fascinating because I do not understand what your future will be. I can say with perfect certainty how you will react to what happens to you or what your next move will be. You also already know that you are not the only person this applies to.”

 

Here, the Outsider hesitated, before continuing. “But the part I did not tell you is that the world itself is shaped by you, Bucky. I cannot see your future, because your hands are creating it at every moment. The future itself is bending to your will, your actions. The moment Natasha’s heart stopped, my gaze was affixed to you because I could see the fate of the city, even the world as you know it, warping around you. But as before, you are not the only person I’ve met for whom the world bends.”

 

“Barton,” Bucky murmured in understanding. “And that’s why you picked us, isn’t it? Because he was creating destiny itself."

 

“It’s the reason I’ve always Chosen the humans marked by me,” he said simply.

 

“But why, after killing Natasha…?” Wounded, he whispered “I do not believe that you would so easily tether yourself to such a treasonous killer, Outsider.”

 

“Bucky,” he answered softly. “Clint has known me these twenty years past, since I Chose him as a young man in Karnaca. He was barely older than a child then.”

 

“You…you…” _You’ve created a murderer_! Bucky wanted to scream.

 

“As I said, I cannot know your destinies when you are the hands shaping it. I wanted to watch what Clint did, knowing that he could change the world around him. As with many times before, I was disappointed with what I saw,” he said, and a very human emotion built in his voice – bitterness. “And this is the reason Clint has punished you. He is angry with me because I stopped speaking to him years ago. He feels that I’ve abandoned him.”

 

 _He’ll grow tired of you, too, in time. He grows tired of us all_. “And did you?”

 

“I gave him the power to influence nations, conquer cities,” the Outsider murmured. “I created a kingmaker, a once in a lifetime leader. And blessed with these gifts, Clint chose to kill people for money. You already know that puerile violence doesn’t interest me, Bucky. He knew it, too. But he ignored my words.”

 

Bucky grunted in agreement. He understood what the Outsider meant, why he was so unhappy with Clint’s choices. But part of him couldn’t help but feel that the Outsider had created a murderer and set him loose upon the world. Clint’s perceived abandonment by him would’ve only made that worse.

 

“Are there others?”

 

“Hm?”

 

“Like me. Like Barton. Are there any others?”

 

The Outsider shifted, bracing a forearm upon Bucky’s chest as his night-black eyes examined him. “There are only four of you who remain alive at this time.” His brows drew together. “You would not have cause to hurt the others.”

 

He said it with the surety of one who knew it already. “May I know their names?”

 

“The fourth among you, I Chose even more recently than yourself and she is also right here in Dunwall. She is a child and I shall give no other details about her,” the Outsider said firmly. “The second of you is native to the city of your birth, Karnaca. His name is Matthew and he has been mine since he was a boy. I believe you would like him, but he is very conflicted about his connection to me and he would be quite appalled by your loyalty, by the trust you place in me. I don’t recommend seeking him out.”

\---

Across the city, Wanda Maximoff, future empress, was fretfully petting the white rat resting in her lap. Krysa was the unquestionably the smartest animal she’d ever encountered – he seemed to know when she was happy and wanted to play with him, when she was upset and wanted to pet and cuddle him.

 

She wanted Bucky.

 

Indeed, she had _demanded_ Bucky and when Ross had hemmed and hawed at her, Wanda had assumed that he was on one of those important jobs Bucky didn’t like telling her about, even though the party was supposed to be for him. But then the next morning came and he still wasn’t there. Miss Pepper didn’t come down to have breakfast with her.

 

She’d gone to find Tony and Peter, but the door to the workshop was closed and a pair of city watchmen were hammering at the steel plating at the entrance.

 

Ross told her it was time to go and at first, Wanda thought they were going back to the palace. But Miss Pepper still hadn’t come down from the tower and Bucky was still missing. She refused to board the boat when it arrived and Toomes picked her up and carried her, thrashing and screaming the whole way.

 

Once at Kingsparrow, the servants fled from Wanda’s screaming, tearful rages. Toomes appeared very tempted to thrash her the way he’d done to Peter, but on the island, they were surrounded on all sides by Imperial guardsmen, dependent upon them for security, and both men knew that the guardsman would not treat anyone who tried beating the future empress kindly.

 

Toomes was becoming increasingly frustrated with her intractable behavior and Ross was beginning to think this whole plan had all been for naught. They’d intended to take control of the empire using Wanda as their child-empress puppet. But her agreeable behavior had vanished and the only man shown to be capable of controlling her was supposed to be rotting at the bottom of Wrenhaven River.

 

Wanda had been hiding in an ornate closet for well over an hour – she refused to ‘act like a lady’ until someone explained what happened to her father and all her friends!

 

The fretful petting slowed and then halted to a full stop as Wanda fell asleep leaning upon a pile of silk gloves and velvet opera cloaks.

 

She dreamed, and in her dreams was the vague impressions of a narrow face. Less vague were his eyes – blacker than a starless, moonless night – and he embraced her with darkness, with the tepid caress of heavy shadows. “I want Daddy,” she whimpered into his suit of mourning-black. “They won’t tell me where his is.”

 

“Just stay calm, Majesty,” her strange friend purred, the sound ringing and rattling through the air like marbles being shaken in a tin can. “The Lord Protector is coming to find you.”

 

“He is?”

 

“Oh yes, indeed.”

\---

The Outsider rested his chin upon his fist and stared at Clint, sitting at his desk. “After all these years, your propensity to make decisions which you immediately regret never ceases to amaze me.”

 

“Yeah, and one of them was saying yes to you,” Clint answered snidely.

 

Leaning back, the Outsider leaned back from his perch on the windowsill, hands rested on empty air, his upper body hanging out into empty space. “You and I both know you didn’t want to do that.”

 

“If you’re going to stand there and lecture me, you might as well save your breath,” Clint informed, finishing the entry in his journal and carefully sprinkling sand over the surface.

 

The Outsider glanced at the packed satchel, stuffed with blankets and gold. “And what do you intend to do if he comes after you? Run away?”

 

“Either he’ll kill me and I won’t be going anywhere, or I’ll kill him and finally be able to leave this wretched city.” Clint said, turning away. “Either way, I can’t go anywhere until he’s been dealt with. I’m not leaving only to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.”

 

 _You’ll do that anyway_ , the Outsider did not say. _Because it’s who you are_.

 

They both already knew that.

\---

“Bucky,” he murmured quietly, balanced over the rubble upon his heels. High above the Outsider, the wooden slats wedged over the old vat allowed only filtered sunlight, but he stood in the same flat gray light he always did. Laying among the rubble, his beloved lord did not stir. The Outsider grabbed his jacket and shook him a little. “Bucky.”

 

Still nothing. The Outsider, for the first time in many, many centuries, began to feel something approaching fear. “Bucky, you must wake up now,” he said, half-pleading. “Wake up!”

 

Trembling all over, Bucky gave a half-hearted attempt to roll over and face him, covering his eyes aching eyes the whole time. “Nnn-?”

 

“That’s it, darling,” he crooned, pitching his voice to a low and seductive song, trying to make his words as convincing as possible. “Bucky, you _must_ get up now. The longer you lie here, the more danger your daughter is in.”

 

It was slow going – painfully slow. Bucky’s muscle control and coordination had been damaged, even if just temporarily, by his exposure to the poison and the Outsider could verbally harass him into movement, could encourage him to hurry, he could even provide support to prevent him from falling down but he could not physically force him to move.

 

“I’m not strong enough to climb out of here,” Bucky said bleakly, staring up at the wooden slats overhead.

 

The Outsider quirked an eyebrow at him. “Who said you would climb?”

 

There was a hole in the old vat that he’d been thrown in, a few rats scurrying about. “Ah, I see,” Bucky said shakily, reaching out with the numbed fingertips of his left hand. “ _Pronikat’ krysa_.”

 

The mind of a rat was often more comfortable to Bucky than any other creature, but leaving it’s existence was never a pleasant experience even under the best of circumstances. “By the Void!” he gasped, body bursting back into physical existence as the rat died below him, it’s life unable to bear the weight of Bucky’s consciousness upon it, even for that short time. “Outsider…”

 

The Outsider caught him before Bucky could collapse into the murky, stagnant water surrounding the entire district, but he couldn’t manage to stay on his feet, collapsing to his knees with both hands fisted in the Outsider dark suit. “Everything hurts,” he sobbed. “Everything…”

 

His head was splitting, the fingertips on his left hand were still numb, he was starving but sick to his stomach, and the only thing that kept him from falling into the disgusting swill of the water were the Outsider’s arms around him.

 

“You need food,” his dissonant voice murmured and managed to pull Bucky into a standing position. “You cannot become well when you are dehydrated and starving, Bucky.”

 

He hardly believed him at first – he was shaking as a newborn foal in winter and using the Outsider to remain standing. He hardly believed himself capable of fighting assassins just because he’d had a snack. But the Outsider led him off to the remains of a house, finding scraps of rotted fruit, which he left there, and tins of eel, which he devoured. The walk had served to help him gain some muscle control and the food slowly gave back some of his strength.

 

He doubted that it would be enough to take on an army of assassins and their leader but what else was he going to do? When had he ever had a choice in what he did?

 

“Is Wanda still safe?” he asked hoarsely, slowly pulling himself into standing.

 

“She is,” the Outsider said firmly. “Though she misses you.”

 

He felt for a sword he realized was no longer there. The first thing he’d have to do was retrieve the gear Clint had tossed to the bottom of Greaves Refinery. Perhaps, he thought, glancing at the narrow figure of the creature he’d found himself hopelessly in love with, perhaps he was not as helpless at he often felt.

 

The Outsider’s dark eyes gleamed back at him. _The future itself is bending to your will, your actions_.

 

Bucky had lived his whole life obeying orders, bowing to laws and norms to remain by first Natasha and then Wanda's side. But somehow he'd still ended up severed from them. Maybe it was time for the world to do a little bending.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Flooded District is undoubtedly my favorite chapter of the whole game - I'm already super excited to finish this story and go on to the Knife of Dunwall, because we get a lot more of Clint's perspective and his actions there.


End file.
